Starbreak
by rendezvous
Summary: [IY/K/SS][AU] She’s tired, she’s alone, and her roommate is a cross-dressing nymphomaniac. And then there’s the /minor/ problem of her (occasionally) turning into a rampaging werewolf that not even the 'all-powerful' Inuyasha can control...
1. Flare

**Starbreak**

**Title: **Starbreak

**Author: **CelesteSpring (blujade288@yahoo.com)

**Disclaimer: **Seeing that all the clever ones have already been taken, I have only a humble "I don't own them" to offer.  Also based on the world (world only) of Laurell K.  Hamilton's vampire series.  No one does werewolf politics like LKH.  

**Rating: **PG-13 for violence, profanity, and sexuality.

**Summary: **[SS/K/IY][AU] Werewolf powerplay—two words best avoided at all cost.  Warning: excessive violence, passion, intrigue, and betrayal is hazardous to your health (but feedback is still adored :D).

**AN: **Have you, dear reader, grown tired of the standard Inuyasha-save-Kagome fare served up time after time by Rumiko Tamakashi?  Then this is the fic for you!  (Or at least, I hope it is...)  

As of now, I have not yet decided the pairing.  All feedback will be taken into consideration.  But then, brothers _are_ supposed to share, right...?  (Ew.  I did _not _just say that.)

**Chapter One:  Flare**

"What about this one, brother?  Is she yours, too?"—**Sesshoumaru**  

:::=:::=:::

The distant bell tower had already sounded ten times when the first of the werewolves burst in.

_Dong....  _Sweeping echoes reverberated through the crowded room, and even with its masses of people twisting and flowing and twirling to the pounding music, she could hear the soothing bell chimes.  Strobe lights of dark crimson and violent purple swept over the roiling multitude of people.  So many _people.  _It hurt her head just to be near this seething mass of humanity, all out and determined to have a good time.  _Lose yourself in the music, Kagome.  Dance for me.  _Never mind that tomorrow they would wake up with reeking breaths and bloodshot eyes and killer hangovers. 

_You're such a party pooper, Kagome.  _

She frowned.  If Hojo were here, he would've chided her for acting the part of a spoiled little girl.  Why was she not dancing like the rest of them?  And she would reply, with barely contained derision in her voice, _I don't dance, Hojo._

She didn't know _how _to—but she hadn't told them that.

_Then why did you come with us? _

_There's not much point to going to a dance club if you're not gonna **dance**, Kagome.  _Reiko, gentle smile understanding, but small frame vibrating with the eagerness to get away, to dance, to have her fun.

_It's alright.  I'm fine here.  You guys go by yourselves.  _She made shooing motions with her hands, plastering a smile over her face.

So here she was, sitting all by her lonesome self in a dark corner of the bar.  The tequila that she was nursing glowed dim amber in the warm light, and she took another sip.  The alcohol burned all the way down her throat, but this time she didn't choke.  She offered a hazy smile to her mirrored reflection.  _See, I'm improving.  I can drink beer now without throwing up!  _For some reason, the thought brought an inane giggle up the front of her throat.

Why had she come, indeed...

_You will have fun at college, Kagome.  You will, you will, you will—!_

The mirror shivered like a disturbed surface of quiet water.  She gave a distant start, realized that someone had seated herself next on the adjoining bar seat.  Long silver hair flickered distant violet and blue in the dancing lights, and she stared in a half-drunken interest.  

"Vodka on rocks."  Her voice was surprisingly masculine.  _Wait—_

The face that _he _turned towards Kagome reflected nothing but disinterest.  "What?"

_—Him._

"I—" The words caught in her belly.

His eyes glittered gold in the dim overhead lights of the bar.  Around them people danced to the rhythm of hypnosis.  Fear constricted her throat. 

_Werewolf._

The gold eyes—silver hair—the way he held himself, even just sitting there on his stool.  An upright position, tense and ready, as if in any second he could dart up, or lunge right, or lope away into the night.  But there was also something else—the feel of an aura around him, something dangerous, something that tasted of forest and pack and sharp, snapping teeth.  It reminded her of an injured animal, an injured _wolf_—  

He was first to look away.  "You got a problem, girl?"

"...No."

"Then stop staring at me like I'm some sort of freak."

She averted her gaze, pinning her eyes on her tequila instead.  She wasn't afraid.  She wasn't.  So what if he was a werewolf?  Shapeshifters had been legalized almost five years ago; they were considered human, people, citizens.  Citizens with rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  And not all of them were bad...  

_But this one..._

"Oh wait.  That's not right.  I _am _a freak, aren't I?"  He laughed, bitter and biting.  She sat frozen to her chair.

"Go ahead.  Run away, girl."  A hand latched onto her chin, jerking her face towards his.  His fingers burned warm, tips pricking into her skin.  Lights danced in his eyes like flickers of flame.  She stifled a scream.    "Scared, aren't you?"  He breathed in, licked his lips.  She watched the wicked curve of his mouth as the beginnings of terror stirred in her stomach.  "I can taste it."

She winced as his hand tightened, then jerked her head back as he released her, concealing her fear with a glare of anger.  "Bastard.  Go harass someone else, why don't you?"

The eyes narrowed.

_Stupid, stupid girl.  What are you **thinking**?_

He turned away, back to his drink, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like _feisty bitch_.  His other hand slid out of his pocket to tap impatient rhythms against the heavy glass cup.    

His nails— 

They tapered to fine points of sharp ivory, five individual knives.  The fingers—they were normal, but somewhere along the second and third joint, the human digits furred, arched, curved into hooked claws.  Sharp, _wicked_ looking claws.  

"Pretty, aren't they?"  His voice, amused, yanked her back into herself.  The hand—_claw_—flexed, and for the first time she noticed the dusting of silver hair on his corded forearm.  He held his hand up to the light, and the color of tawny yellow played along the edge of nails like liquid butterscotch.  

"Are you _trying _to scare me, or what?"  She glared at him, head swarming slightly.  

He smirked, and there was only a small hint of fang in his expression.  "You got it, sister."

In the distance, the college bell tower sounded, deep, ringing chimes of rhythm and peace.  Announcing the midnight hour.  _The midnight hour.  _How stupidly melodramatic, she thought woozily.  Then she giggled.          

That was when the glass mirror in front of them shattered.

"Get _down!_"  The sound of glass exploding and wood splintering brought a small scream up her throat.  Her vision swam in wood-rot brown and violent red.  _Too much to drink—_and he grabbed her arm, those claws digging into tender skin, jerking her up violently.  The world tilted again, and warmth dripped down the front of her shirt.  She stared at the bright red worms crawling down her arm in dull horror.          

He was staring at the blood too, eyes transfixed into stillness.  The gold depths shimmered in emotion—horror?  Disbelief?  Shock?

_Disgust.  _"Damn humans," he snarled.  "Fucking good for nothing but bleeding!"  

And then in a blur of motion he had scooped her up in his arms, sinewy muscle locked tight around her waist.  She tried to scream, but what came out was a small squeak of fear.  Her arm—it burned like it was _alive_, like nothing short of cutting it off would stop the pain.  Wetness tracked down her cheeks; lights flew by in a haze of shifting gold and blue.  The wind (_what wind?_) blew her unbound hair into streaming ribbons—

Stop.  Everything.  _Stop fast-forward rewind_

Pain lanced up her leg as metal rammed into her shin.  The wooden floor burned like ice beneath her palms, her belly, her cheek.  She couldn't breath, _couldn't breath, _could only lie there as her heart twisted in her chest like an animal trying to claw its way out of a prison, and something panicking inside her was screaming that he had dropped her, he had fucking _dropped her—_

_You bastard_

Then she turned her head the other way, so that her burning cheek rested against the ice.  And saw him, buried under a pile of twisting, writhing shapes of darkness.  The air stank of the smell of werewolf, feral and free.  Breath clogged in her lungs.  Even as she watched in her frozen silence, one of the dark shapes was tossed off, streaking through darkness and strobe lights and terrified (_useless humans_) people to crash into the wall.  It _(It's an 'it' not a 'he' or 'she' no no no) _slid onto floor and was still.

Her heart jerked violently in her chest.  _Oh god, oh god.  _Another wolf, this time one the size of an overgrown German Shepard, slammed into the mahogany bar near her, thrown aside like so much trash.  Its dusky brown fur stood on its end, bristling, but the deep sound that issued from its throat—_it's whimpering._

"Girl!  Get over here—" the man snarled, claws streaming crimson, silver hair flowing onto the floor like a spill of pale moonlight.  He crouched, fangs bared as two wolves circled him, one small and compact, the other dark, black as night.  "No, _stay!_"  And then his eyes fixed on something behind her.  "Oh, _fuck—_"

A slender hand clamped down into her hair, and she was dragged up until the tip of her toes barely touched the ground.  Her scalp protested painfully against the assault, and she hissed.  Those fingers—one had a grip around her waist, almost _gentle?_—they weren't anything like the silver wolf's.  Slender, maybe even manicured, and she thought, rather insanely, about how she would've killed to get her nails as perfect as that.

_Maybe I can ask him which salon he goes to after all this is over.  _

_Oh god, this is insane._

The black wolf tensed, then pounced in a leaping, graceful arch.  

"Miroku, _down,_" a smooth voice said, unruffled and deep.  The hand wound through her hair loosened, and she collapsed back down onto her feet, heart racing erratically.  But the arm still captured her waist like a slender band of steel.  The black wolf, Miroku, twisted aside at the last possible second, only inches from his target, and landed on four paws.  His eyes, when he turned their way, were violet, and they flickered in some unidentifiable emotion.

The silver-haired man was staring at him.  "Miroku..."

"Inuyasha, acknowledging one of the Ulfric's bodyguards before acknowledging the Ulfric himself is against pack law."  The man behind her shifted, tsking softly.  His voice purred too close to her ear, like a cold brush of velvet.  "Bow down to your leader, _now_."

_Inuaysha.  His name is...Inuyasha._

"Fuck you, Sesshoumaru."

"I am Ulfric.  You will call me Ulfric.  You will obey me."

"Ulfric my ass.  You trapped me, trapped _her_."  Inuyasha's eyes unfocused, as if he were seeing something else, someone else, but anger snapped again in air.  "I'll obey you over my dead body!"

The man behind her, the one Inuyasha had addressed as Sesshoumaru, sighed.  "Silly boy."  There was contempt, and perhaps a trace of pity, threaded through his voice like prickly thorns.  "I see you're still keeping human company."  His hand kneaded her shoulder, just hard enough to show his strength.  Kagome knew that he could break both her arms without a flicker of eyelash.  "Half-breed human that you are..." he said absently.

_Half...human...?_

Inuyasha only snorted.  "This half-breed can kick your worthless ass."

Sesshoumaru kept his silence, but she could feel him tense behind her.  The slender lines of his body flared in heated anger against her back, and she gasped as power flared in a wave of spasming intensity.  It marched along her arms like a swarm of fire ants, but it smelled of musk, and fur, and forest.  _The pack.  _

"Say that again, _brother._"

Inuyasha took a step forward, but the dozen wolves surrounding him growled in warning.  _Don't, you idiot, don't.  _She didn't know when she had figured out that Inuyasha was the good guy, but somehow she _knew_ that he was her only chance of surviving this whole damn mess.  

"They wouldn't do it.  They wouldn't willingly kill me," Inuyasha said, glancing around at the circle of wolves.  "They were mine, once."

Warm breath tickled the back of her neck.  "They will if I tell them to.  Just like Miroku did."

Inuyasha cursed.  "You've brainwashed him, you ass, filled up his mind with your senseless drivel.  He was my wolf."

"'Brainwashed'?" Sesshoumaru mused.  "Hardly.  Miroku, he saw the error of your ways.  So did everyone else."  He swept a hand in a graceful arch, gesturing towards the waiting wolves.  The dance club was empty of humans.  She was alone, caught in the proverbial wolf den.

"Bastard—"

"What about this one, brother?  Is she yours, too?"  Fingers played along the nape of her neck, and her body spasmed to the edge of pleasure, riding the molten flow of power that burst through her veins.  Warm breath fanned out over her curve of neck.  _Don't scream, don't scream—_and he pressed lips to her skin.  

Her breath shuddered out, arms hanging uselessly by her side.  The cuts still burned like fiery hell, but it seemed so small next to the cloying power that smelled of lycanthrope, that grasped her by her throat, squeezing until she couldn't breathe—

He released her.  She didn't scream.  

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

When Sesshoumaru spoke, his voice spilled over in languor, like an elegant drunk.  "This one...she's no human."

"...What?"

"You're a fool."  He laughed, a caressing sound that vibrated down her back.  "Can you not taste her power?"

Inuyasha balanced on his heels, lonely strobe lights playing across a black jacket.  For the first time, Kagome noticed dizzily the strands of silver hair that spilled onto the floor, near her feet.  _Silver..._

_Brothers._

She was drunk—drunk on terror, drunk on power, and lastly, drunk on alcohol.  _God help me._

Still Inuyasha said nothing.  His eyes were shadowed.

The power receded like a distant tide, then flared again, a cresting wave of fire.  Sesshoumaru grabbed her arm, forced it up to the light.  The cuts glowed a bruised blue-violet in the dimness of the club.

"You marked her."

Disbelief, disgust.  _The same disbelief in Inuyasha's eyes, when he saw the snaking rivulets of crimson running down her arm.  His claws loosening, falling away.  _

Inuyasha was silent.  His head was bowed.

"Fool.  You are honor bound to her now."

"Shut up," he whispered.

"If she was human, she would already be dead.  _Brother_."

Kagome bit down on a whimper as Sesshoumaru's fingers tightened painfully.  The burning was distant now, and her head once again began to swim in violent swirls of red and pink.  Her knees buckled, and she collapsed back into his arms.  

Was she..._dying?_

"She's going through it right now," a dispassionate voice observed from above.  _Help me.  _The warmth spread out in a circle of cold fire.  She jerked as a _thing _ran her through, a slithering serpent that flowed up from her spine, down her legs, from her arms, a force that promised darkness, death, power.  _Power corrupts, I don't want it._  Breath trembled out.  _Dying...dying...dying..._

It hurt.

"_Damn you!_"  Inuyasha's anger—it flowed like Sesshoumaru's power, warm and alive and smelling of pack.  But there was a faint edge of bitterness and mourning that sawed at her sanity.  _Too much—it is all too much.  _She was screaming, clawing blindly at nothing.  Hands restrained her, but she fought on with a savage strength she didn't know she had, fingers hooking into tight slivers of pain, trying to tear free—

The snarlings of wolves echoed through the room, a cacophony of low growls and high yips.  Then came sudden silence, broken only from above, by that calm voice.  

"Rin."  

Quiet, detached, unemotional—but his hands tightened around her shaking wrists.  

"Let go of the girl!"  Inuyasha's voice scratched at her ears through the distant roar of flames.  She writhed against the unseen pain, small, pitiful cries escaping her lips.  Her flesh was charring, roiling like a cruel desert storm—

"Release Rin."

"You give her to me first.  Now!"

Fireflies flew drunken circles across her vision.  Sesshoumaru pushed her forward, and some part of her mourned the loss of captivity, the steel hands locked around her waist, the warmth of lips touching her neck.  He had been trying to catch her scent, like the wolf that he was.  _His face—I didn't get to see his face—_and then she fell, knees giving out from beneath her—_fall down down down—_onto the floor.  Cool tiles pressed against her cheek, and she tried to curl up into a ball—_it hurts, it hurts—_but someone was yelling at her, screaming, and those arms, corded and strong, they scooped her up again in a careful _(careful?) _embrace.

"Be ready," Inuyasha whispered, and then iron sung its song of tortured metal; wood splintered into fragments of jagged mahogany and pricked splinters.  The night air blew warm, like the breath of a tender lover, against her cheek.  

Still, she burned.

:::=:::=:::

AN:  Yech, it sure got hot, didn't it?  Tell me what you think, and I'll give you a cookie!  ^^  


	2. Woven

**Starbreak**

**AN:  **Vacations=no access to internet.  Or even a computer, for that matter.  Sorry this chapter took so long.  And for the record—when I say 'love triangle' (uck, that just sounds tacky, doesn't it?), I don't mean some half-assed attempt that's 99% Sesshoumaru and 1% Inuyasha.  Keep that in mind, please.  And enjoy.  ^^  

**Chapter Two: Woven**

"He's probably too busy drinking and stealing and rutting to jump at the Ulfric's bidding.  That rat-fink bastard never was one for a lap dog."—**Kagura**

:::=:::=:::

She was grace.  Majesty.  The delicate legs picked carefully among the tangled vines and withered roots and hidden traps of forest.  Her liquid dark eyes, large and unsuspecting, flitted from darkness to darkness like a wandering butterfly, and the pale line of her neck glowed pure as white lace.  She tossed her head, ears pricking as the warm August wind whispered through the cool darkness, rustling leaves and stirring life.  An owl hooted its lonesome cry, and then the branches above them shivered and parted; a thin sliver of moon showed through the dark green cover of elms and oaks.  

She was innocence.  He wondered only briefly where her child had gone to before he pounced, a graceful uncoiling of muscle and sinew, claws extended.  The body of wolf: power, endurance, and the prized hunt.

And then, through the thick air and cool wings of night—

_He watched her die.  He watched her wither away.  The proud wolf that she was...oh, no, she didn't stop breathing.  Didn't stop smiling.  Never stopped thinking about what was best for the pack, what was best for her people.  They loved her, their beautiful, proud leader who had survived so much, and she loved them back.  But there was always something missing, a single note of dissonance is the otherwise perfect symphony of pack life.  Inuyasha had been still too young to comprehend.  But Sesshoumaru knew his mother.  He knew her masks.  He knew—_

She tried to twist away from him, those dark liquid eyes screaming terror—

_His father had died in a suicide mission, uncaring and taking chances that even a werewolf couldn't have survived.  The pack was left stranded, with the others after them—all the others—the shapeshifters, the vampires, the faeries, the ogres, the witches, even those pathetic beings called humans.  His father, proud, brutal, suicidal, insane, violent—he heard the whispers among the pack, of his father's madness, all because of a single dead human whelp.  But Inuyasha, the product of that unholy liaison, was accepted among them, because the pack loved their leader, loved him with the blinded loyalty of worshippers, of zealots. _

His claws tore through the delicate skin of her back.  She screamed, screamed, wrenched violently—

_Sesshoumaru didn't accept his little brother.  His **half-breed** little brother.  The rest of the wolves were unseeing to the unnatural freak of nature that was Inuyasha.  And then his father, he had gone and **died **on all of them, on Sesshoumaru, on his mother, on Inuyasha, on his pack, left them to go to the hunting grounds of heaven, where the game was plentiful and there was no betrayal, or lies, or pain.  And Sesshoumaru's mother, oh, she had had no choice but to take another mate in place of her love, to lead the wolves away from their imminent slaughter.  So they had come, to the vibrant forests of West Virginia, where game was ripe, and humans were few and far apart, where his mother wasted away, slowly, from a broken heart and a broken mind.  She still loved his father, but his father was dead, gone to a place where there existed no pain, and she still had a pack to care for, and she did take care of them, for years after his father's death, and Sesshoumaru could only stand aside and watch as his mother died. _

So slowly.

He buried teeth into the hollow of her neck.  The smell of death lifted into his nostrils, thick and cloying.  She thrashed only a little, kicked those delicate legs, twitching like a puppet with cut strings.  

The deer died silently, and Sesshoumaru rose off the steaming corpse, teeth bared in disgust.  His stomach revolted at the sight of her body, so delicate and graceful and lovely in life, now grayed and crimson, with dulled liquid eyes and stained lace of her throat.  Leaves crinkled like tissue paper under his paws, and a sudden wind blew the forest carpet into a whirlwind of solid brown and rich green.  He closed his eyes, scented the air—froze when the musk of a doe caught in the edge of his consciousness.  

_Her child._

The muscles in the back of his hind legs tensed, wound tight like an overstressed spring.  He growled softly, but restrained himself.  He was getting soft, getting weak.  Sentimental.  Any other time he would've loped after her, the defenseless doe that she was, slaughtered her before anything else got there first.  Yet—

He'd killed her mother, but he liked to think, maybe she was strong enough, maybe she would survive in this forest of darkness and lies and scavengers; maybe her mother had taught her enough for her to make it on her own.  So for now he stood, lifting his face to the silver light of the moon, and felt her flee, spindly legs instinctively carrying her away from danger.  Taking her away from him—and her mother.  She knew—some part of her knew—her mother was dead, and a monster stalked nearby.  So the doe ran, away from the werewolf called Sesshoumaru, and away from innocence.  

The young were not always pure.

_I know._

He tugged the deer up by the back of its long neck, dragged it through the forest.  His back strained, if only a little, as the heavy weight of meat caught against a protruding root, green and velvety with lichen, moss.  He gave it a tug, and the corpse jerked, but didn't come loose.  

_Damn._

Sesshoumaru braced his hind legs against the trunk of the withered pine.  With a stubborn set of jaw, he rumbled deep in the back of his throat, and yanked again, this time harder.  The root strained against him, wood creaking.  _Harder._  He wrenched at it, teeth slipping in tender meat and fresh blood—and then the tree root splintered.  The forelegs of the deer snagged in more vines; he tumbled backwards, surprised for only an instant before he landed on all fours, crouching down into the slope of ground.  His breath panted out in small puffs of white.

This was beginning to seem like more trouble than it was worth.  But still, Rin would be hungry, even if he wasn't.  He was never hungry anymore.  Food had lost its appeal a long time ago.  Now he only ate what was necessary to sustain the change and his power.  

_There was a time when I loved whipped cream._  

That was a few years back.  Two, to be exact.  Odd how things go.  His lips peeled back in a half-snarl.  

Damn his bastard half-breed of a brother.

He heaved at the corpse again, and tugged it with him.  The clearing wasn't too far away, and the trees blurred together as he ran, the deer clutched tightly between his jaws.  It was heaven, when he ran like this, his worries so far behind him that there was nothing left behind him but a faint shimmer of darkness.  It was mindless pleasure, like the heated moment between flesh and fur, the drawn out pleasure-pain of the change.  But this lasted so much longer, and he only had to run through his land, through trees and thickets and time, and let his thoughts bleed away with the wind.

When he burst out into open night the stars sung to him a song clear and sweet.  The deer he dropped at the edge of the circle, forgotten.  

The clearing was shaped like a circle, with five stones placed at regular intervals so that the points formed a pentagon.  The stones towered into the velvet black of night, so beaten with weather and time that the edges had worn away into aged smoothness.  The stones themselves were towering monoliths, structures humans had always believed as mystical—and they were.  

_Those pathetic beings have no idea what a powerful werewolf can do with such a holy ground._  

Wild grasses didn't dare overflow into the clearing.  Rather the line was drawn in a neat arch between green and brown.  Where the clearing dissolved into the forest was where the separation between all things wolf and all things human began.  The place was holy, and why the wolf tribe before them would leave such a gathering of power was something that Sesshoumaru had yet to puzzle out.

He had left his clothes in a tidy pile on the ground, and now he loped to them, let the change take him over.  It still stirred something in him, every time he shifted back to his human form, when bones would stretch, and shorten, and his fur would flow off into delicate skin, and his claws retracted into weak human nails.  Even after all this time, from birth to present, the change still disturbed his peace of mind.  

Some part of him whispered hypocrite.

_You're just as weak as those humans that you so despise._  

He ran his tongue over his teeth, brought hands still slightly furred up to his eyes.  With a small sigh he let his leash over the change dissipate into nothingness.  His teeth dulled and his fingers roiled and stilled into delicate, slender digits.

_Human once again._

The worn fabric of his jeans rubbed like comforting silk against his bared legs.  The night was warm, and usually he would've discarded his clothing in favor of his natural form—_only humans obstruct themselves with foolish things like belts and ties and shoes_—but now wasn't as ordinary as he wanted it to be...

He didn't stiffen, only said, lazily, "I told you to leave me alone."   

Shadows shifted, detached themselves from under the black canopy of gnarled oaks and draping foliage.  The first shape glided along the ground, graceful, as if the normal laws of gravity were to lowly to apply to him.  Starlight traced the lines of a slender brow, straight nose, and long hair the color of an oil spill; repulsive, but strangely beautiful.  His lips lifted in a small smile, but he dropped to one knee, bowed his head.  "Sesshoumaru-sama."

"Rise, Naraku.  There is no need for the formalities when we have known each other for so long."

Naraku returned to his feet, eyes dark and unreadable.  "I meant no offense, Ulfric."

The two shadows behind him flowed into the pale light, and they too dropped down to one knee, like their master.  Although one did so almost reluctantly.

"Kagura, Kanna."  Sesshoumaru let the names slip from his lips, acknowledging them as pack.  He kept himself still, eyes lidded; but his ears pricked and his nose took in the night air, searching for the subtle, sour smell of impending danger.  It was true that Naraku had been his second, his Freki, for years, but Sesshoumaru was too careful to trust him, even now.  Naraku was a time bomb waiting to explode in his face—albeit a useful time bomb.  Still, Naraku's usefulness would have to come to an end soon.

He wasn't much looking forward to it, though.  If Naraku went off he would likely take out the whole pack with him.

"Sesshoumaru-sama," they both said.  Kanna sounded soft and detached, and Kagura—well, she sounded as if the words had to be dragged out from between her teeth with a pair of pliers.  Kanna blinked night-dark eyes at him, long white lashes casting shadows on childishly rounded cheeks.  She was only a pup, but she followed Naraku with unrelenting loyalty; never one to say much, but always near when the need for claws and teeth and violence came.  

_"She was given as a gift, Sesshoumaru-sama."_

An albino from another pack, perhaps.

"We were worried for you safety, Sesshoumaru-sama."  The words were respectful, but the way Kagura let spite slide behind her voice was not.  Eyes the color of fine wine glimmered in faint suggestion, and she rose in one graceful motion, the black claw in her left ear swaying to the wind.  She took a few small steps towards him, hips weaving a hypnotic dance—that was, hypnotic to any other man.

Sesshoumaru had long avoided Kagura's spider-spun trap.  He turned away, displeased but not showing it.

"The Ulfric should not be alone so late at night."  Even without looking he knew that she was a passing dream closer than she'd been a bare moment ago, fingertips reaching out to touch his bare back.  Her scent had taken on a musky edge.  He smiled tightly.

His bare feet whispered silently against moss and the packed dirt of the clearing.  Her touch missed, grazed past drifting strands of hair, scent growing frustrated, angry, and he smiled, lips quirking up into a baring of teeth that lacked mirth.  When he spoke his voice was distant, cold.  "Naraku.  Control your wolf."

"Kagura."  Naraku's voice held an edge of warning, as if he did not expect to be obeyed.  

Sesshoumaru felt her retreat, the presence of her subtle power flaring in anger; but then it quieted, as if by long practice.  "I am merely trying to beg the Ulfric's attention."  Sulky slid into sly.  "It is my right as the dominant alpha female of the pack.  Sesshoumaru-sama is sadly lacking for a lupa right now—"

The growl slipped out before he could do anything to stop it.  "It does not concern you, little one."  

Kagura made an insulted sound.  "'_Little one_'?"

"Kagura!"  Naraku again.  Anger had threaded its way into his words.

She paid him no attention.  "Our Ulfric has no mate, and he has not had one for two years.  And you say it does not concern me?"

Sesshoumaru only stood there, watching her.  Her eyes when she met his gaze blazed a defiant crimson.  

"It is ultimately up to the Ulfric to decide, Kagura," Naraku cut in, voice soft and edged at the same time.  He watched Sesshoumaru too, skin pale white like a corpse's, but there was a faint stain of red on top of his elegant cheekbones.  Spite slid behind his eyes as he turned back to her.  "And you are not the dominant alpha female of this pack just yet."

She bared her teeth at him, angrily.  "I am.  All the females have submitted to me, and the ones that didn't are still nursing their wounds, Naraku."  

Naraku laughed, and Sesshoumaru watched in indifference.  He was undisputed Ulfric, but the pack hierarchy beneath him was always shifting, like an everchanging metamorph.  "The pack still believes Sango is dominant to you.  You are alpha, but only in name."

"I will fight her, then."  Kagura flicked away a strand of hair with a sharp fingernail.

"Sango-chan does not want to fight."  Kanna spoke up for the first time, but her head was still bowed so that the cascade of white hair hid her face.  "But there is a way to force her hand."

"'Force her hand'..." Kagura mused.

"Not if she bares her belly like she did the last time you challenged her," Sesshoumaru said, quietly.  "Pack law is pack law, Kagura."

Her eyes flickered to him.  "If I am dominant, then you will have to consider me for your lupa, Sesshoumaru-sama."

He only looked at her, tiredly.  "You know that I will not choose you."

"You will have to choose someone soon.  The pack demands it."  She barked out a laugh, a joyous sound that held only a sliver of bitterness in it.  "Who will it be, oh great Sesshoumaru-sama?  Do you hate me so much that even Sango-chan would be more bearable?"  She leaned towards him, eyes sparking in malice.  "You know that she still pines after Miroku.  Poor fool.  How will it feel to fuck a wolf who lusts after one of your personal bodyguards, oh all-powerful Ulfric?—"

He backhanded her across her face, and the blow sent her skidding backwards into one of the stones.  She crashed with a painful-sounding crack, but the glare that she sent him was conscious—and baleful.  He had not hurt her all the much.  Sometimes he wished that his self-restraint was not so great.

"Insolent whelp.  You will not dirty Miroku's name in my presence."  

Kanna watched the ongoings like a distant memory, so far away her eyes had glazed over in apparent stillness.  Naraku laughed.  Kagura hissed at him but said nothing, only returned to her feet, leaning against the stone for support.

Sesshoumaru turned away, disgusted.  Disgusted with her, with Naraku, with Kanna, with himself.  She was right, however crudely she put it.  The pack had been clamoring for a lupa for the past two moons, but there was no one he wanted.  Sango was strong, and beautiful, but she hated him, and loved Miroku.  Hate and love were two powerful forces, and in this case, they were both working against him.  

Mating had to be on the consent of both sides; otherwise it would amount to rape.

_The pack does not advocate rape._

"There are plenty more willing than Sango-chan, Sesshoumaru-sama."  He didn't realize he'd spoken outloud until Naraku's words shredded through his contemplation.

"That is not what needs to be addressed."  He closed the distance between him and the center of the clearing in a few long strides.  "Inuyasha..." Anger stirred within him, and he reached for his power, that current of energy gathering in the center of his cupped palm like water, and let it spill over, pouring over his spread fingers like fine-grained sand; they trickled, wove grains into the air and the winds, something alive with the smell of fur.  

The center was a place of power, marked by a single slender sapling, its tender shoots as young as they had been two years ago.

Two years ago.  When his mother had still been alive, had still been leader.  _(Broken leader, broken, she wanted to die, don't you remember—)_  Still the young tree, planted when the pack had first moved to the forests of Virginia, hadn't grown an inch.

Since her death.

He touched a delicate leaf, and blinked.  The veins of pale green that trailed along the edges of the stem darkened to a rotting yellow color before his eyes.  When he blinked again the leaf shivered in the wind, green and tender and perfect.

_"It is because the tree senses the pack's unrest.  Two years ago, you and Inuyasha tore the wolves apart with your power struggles.  Now you are Ulfric in your father's place.  But the tree—it understands that the pack is still not at peace."_

Peace.  Peace was an elusive thing.  He hadn't needed the old were-leopard-leader-slash-reluctant-wisewoman to tell him that.  But Kaede had had more to say.

_"Your business with Inuyasha has not been settled.  Resolve your problems according to pack law.  It is not natural for two blood brothers to fight like you and Inuyasha do, but if both insist and neither backs out, the fight to be Ulfric must be to the death."_

He curled a finger around the slight stem, resisting the urge to rip it out.  It could've been finished two years ago, but circumstances had not allowed.

And now...

_"Settle things fairly, and the pack will prosper.  But if only this bloodshed could be avoided—if only one of you would be willing to bow down to the other..."_

"Perhaps the decision to attack was a bit hasty, Sesshoumaru-sama."

He said nothing, and Naraku took it as a sign to continue.  "You proclaimed him innocent of all crimes, after all."

Sesshoumaru trailed his fingers along veined granite, over the flecked roughness of stone.  "I did the honorable thing, Naraku.  Do you chastise me for it?"

"No, not at all."

"Then what are you saying?"  Power flared under his fingertips like a distant storm.  He caressed the feel of it inside his mind, eyes drifting shut to the faint strains of a silver song that thrummed through the air.  The flow of liquid thunder left a faint aftertaste of jagged electricity—hot, dangerous, coppery—inside his mouth.

"The pack is convinced of Inuyasha's innocence, and we can do nothing more but accept him back.  But he has been branded coward among shapeshifters; he will not have as many supporters as he did before."  Naraku was leaning forward, black hair tumbling down around shoulders like a midnight waterfall.  His eyes were lidded, but underneath the veil of thick lashes they danced in anticipation.  "Inuyasha will challenge you again, but this time we will defeat him, Sesshoumaru-sama."

_"Your wolves will prosper, as they did under your father's rule."  _

Dance to pack law.  Fight to pack law.  Love, eat, kill, live—all to pack law.

Pack law will be the death of me yet.

Sesshoumaru closed his eyes.  "The challenge has not yet been issued.  Send Miroku and Kouga to inform Inuyasha that the formal reception will be in a few days.  He knows where, and when."

_Inuyasha will be accepted back into the pack.  Dear brother, how I've missed you._  The edge of his lips curled up in a sardonic smile.

"Kouga?  He's probably too busy drinking and stealing and rutting to jump at the Ulfric's bidding."  Kagura tossed her head, and the silver of the delicate chain-link claw flashed in pale moonlight.  "That rat-fink bastard never was one for a lap dog."  She had risen off the ground now, but still kept her distance from Sesshoumaru.  

"Yes, that Kouga is somewhat of a miscreant, isn't he?"  Naraku sounded amused.

"Maybe Inuyasha can kick his ass for you, Sesshoumaru-sama."  Kagura's words were carefully devoid of malice.

Sesshoumaru placed his palm against the stone.  The girl had no idea how closely she'd followed his thoughts.  "Naraku, Miroku will take Kouga with him if I insist."

"Sesshoumaru-sama, are you sure that Inuyasha will not...?"  He let the words trail off, but his dark eyes left no questions as to what he was asking.

"Inuyasha will not harm Miroku."

"What of Kouga?" 

Sesshoumaru turned his head her way.  "Are you worried for his safety, Kagura?"

"No!"

"Then do not question what I say."

Her silence was a stubborn one.

"And also—" he paused, considered his next words.  "How is Rin?"

"Coming along nicely."  Kagura gave a very unladylike snort.  "Her dear 'Jakan-sama' is telling her bedtime stories right now.  How she managed to get him to do that is beyond me."

Naraku chuckled quietly.  "Probably flashed those little cat-fangs of hers his way, yes?"

He closed his eyes, having already heard what he wanted to hear.  "That is enough.  You may go."

Naraku bowed his head, and turned to leave.  But then he stopped again.  "Sesshoumaru-sama, who was the girl with Inuyasha yesterday night?"

He glanced his way.  "An unknowing witch, by her scent.  Why do you ask?"

"Inuyasha seemed very concerned for her safety."  Naraku smiled, a wicked curve of lips.  

Sesshoumaru was quiet for a while.  "I'll keep it in mind."

Kagura gave a disgruntled _hmph_, as if to say _I can't believe you're more interested in a human whelp than in me._  But one thing Kagura wasn't was dumb, and she kept her silence, despite the shimmer of barely contained power that roiled around her like a wave of heat.

"Control yourself, Kagura."  He turned to her an empty face.  "I may have to choose a lupa by the next moon, but there is nothing stopping me from choosing your death even sooner.  I am Ulfric.  My word is law.  Remember this."

He rose.  The wind had quieted, and he strode away to where the deer lay, naked flesh still steaming in the night air.  

_Rin will be hungry._

He left them, and the memory of their eyes followed him even as he melted into the safety of the forest.

_My forest._

My home.

:::=:::=:::

AN:  All the characters of Inuyasha appeal to me on some level, but note that Kikyo and Shippou are missing from this profound statement.  Also note that Shippou is missing from this fic altogether.  Sorry to fox-groupies out there.  (Well, maybe I'll stick him in there later.  Somehow.)  

Can you tell that I'm a Kagura fan?  There's just something so wonderfully bitchy about her, and she says the most interesting things.  And you can't help but love the outfit.  And the fan.  And her scary eyes.  O.o 

Assuming my dear muse doesn't desert me anytime soon, you guys can expect an update every few days or so.  At the rate I'm going, anyway.

*tackles muse and grabs her in a stranglehold*

Muse: Gack!

*attempts to chain her down*

Muse: Gasp!  Choke!  DIE!

Oh dear.  She's no good to me zonked out like this, is she? (Don't you just love that word?)

Leave a review, and you will have my eternal love.  Which is better than a mere cookie, yes? ^^


	3. Scattered

**Starbreak**

**AN:  **Kagome and /Shippou/?  O.o  Do tell me you're kidding...

**Chapter Three: Scattered**

"At first I believed her, you know.  But then when I found out I couldn't cast any of those cool magic spells I saw on T.V..."--** Kagome** ****

:::=:::=:::

_Do you believe in miracles?_

_...Because—_

Her body throbbed all over, like someone had skinned her alive and then hung her out to dry.  A shudder rippled through her frame, and she clutched desperately at her pillow.

_—I know I don't._

"How long has it been?  Since you..." 

Blankets tangled around her legs, poisonous limbs of thick-bodied serpents.  She tried to fight them.  She couldn't.

The answer came, short and brusque.  "Twenty-three hours."

Dull pain ached somewhere back in the recesses of her skull.  _How do the dead feel pain?_

"...How?"  The voice lilted female, and puzzled.  Confused.  Astonished?  

_How do the dead hear voices?_

Silence.  Then:  "I don't know."

_Help me._

Him again.  The one called..._Inuyasha.  That's his name.  _"Sesshoumaru's right.  She was never human."

_I'm human.  I'm Higurashi Kagome, I'm twenty-one, I love Thai pickles and spicy curry, and stuffed animals that smell like my laundry room, and annoying the hell out of my little brother, and singing and music and playing chopsticks on the piano.  I'm human—and you people are all crazy._

"She smells...different."

"...Yeah."  He was quiet for a moment.  "I should've noticed."

"You should've been more careful!"  The female voice held warmth, the beginnings of anger.

"I know!"  Inuyasha—ragged, desperate, defeated.  "I know."

Silence.  She wanted to lapse back into her dream world—_to be alone_—but something kept her there, a twisting, burning feeling lying dead in the bottom of her stomach.  A touch of wet cloth smoothed across her forehead, but the coolness did nothing but make her want to scream, to get out, away.  Fever churned against the back of her throat, and her mouth tasted of old copper pennies and the faint after-traces of alcohol.

She opened her eyes—and saw nothing.

_Darkness.  Anger.  Power.  Fear.  _The weak scream ripped away the remaining air in her lungs, leaving her to cough, violent and spasming, into her twisted blankets.  The cloth scratched like old straw against her cheek.  She didn't know how.  Why.  Where.  She was dead—_dead dead, dead_—but dead people didn't cough, they didn't wake up trapped in blankets, they didn't wake up _blind._

"Oh!"  The woman, voice surprised.  Hands reached out towards her, a breath of movement in the darkness.  She clawed at them in trembling fear, swiping blindly.  _Feel_—the stir of air as they came for her, the scrape of a chair.  She remembered then, the bite of harsh fingers around her wrists, bruising, and the fire that had swept through her after, merciless and destroying everything it had touched.  _Me.  Destroying me._

"Kagome!"  The name sounded strange, coming from this stranger's mouth.  "Girl!—" (_that's better_)  "Damnit, stay still!"

The blankets yanked out from under her.  She gave a cry, limbs flailing in every which way.  Her lungs tightened in panic.  She remembered—

_The power oh god oh god don't touch me_

The air stirred again, someone lunging out to catch her as she scrambled backwards, mattress creaking in protest at her weight.  The room—so dark.  Her eyes searched, seeing nothing, darting in and out of madness.  The room—it smelled of werewolf.  The smell clung to her hair, her body, and—_where were her clothes?_

The room—it was suddenly so cold.  

_Higurashi Kagome, you get up this instant and stop acting so weak!_

_Mother..._

She stopped moving.  The hands that reached out for her hovered at the edge of her awareness, dim movements of—_sound?_ _smell? taste?_

"Kagome..." the female voice said, unsure and questioning.

She shivered in the darkness, tugged the blanket up over her shoulders.  A coppery stench lingered like an ominous reminder in the air.  "Who...are you?"

Someone shifted, maybe even impatiently.  The sound reached her ears like a faint rustling of raven wings.  "I'm..." the woman hesitated.  

"Just tell her."  Inuyasha.  

"Are you so sure?"  

"Do it!"  A growl trickled into his voice. 

"What the hell are you yelling at me for, you arrogant—!"

"I am your dominant, little one.  Now tell her!"

"Oh, so now you're pulling rank on me!  Well, let me tell you something, Inuyasha.  You were stronger—once.  But that was a long time ago."  Her yelling had gone ragged.  "You left your pack behind, ran away with your tail tucked between your legs.  You should be happy that I am willing to help you at all!"

Silence.  Kagome closed her eyes.  _Maybe they'll tear each other apart before they can even get to me._

Not damn likely.  Not with her luck.

Then his voice cracked bitter laughter in the darkness.  "I won't be an outcast for long.  But even if I were, I can still handle you in a fair fight.  Don't overestimate yourself, Sango."

She hissed.  "You can try right now, you prick."

"No."

"What?"

"I said no."

Sango laughed scornfully.  "I have never heard of you refusing a fight before.  You're getting soft, Inuyasha."      

"We have more important things to deal with."

"'_We_'?  This is your doing.  Deal with it yourself."  Wood screeched against iron hinges, and light flooded into the dank room, warm and butter yellow.  Sango paused at the doorway, casting a lean shadow of tense werewolf.  Her voice when it came was softer, and slightly pitying.  "Good luck for now—Inuyasha."  She left.

Silver hair hid the right side of his drawn face.  His eyes shone gold in gentle light, but they were unfocused, unsure.    

_I'm not—blind._

Nor was she alone.

"Inuyasha...?"  Her words croaked out, and she nearly choked on the cotton dryness of her tongue.  

He handed her a glass of water, but said nothing.  Drinking obediently, she noted distantly his hand was no longer tipped with knives. 

"You okay?"

"My head hurts."

He shook his head, and strands of hair fell into his eyes, hiding his face.  "You'll be fine."

She was quiet for a while.  "Will I?"

Inuyasha barked out a laugh.  The sudden sound drove pain into her skull, and it wasn't because of a hangover.  She knew it wasn't.  It was...different, somehow.  Just a dull ache of..._something.  _

The laughter stopped, cut off like a dead phone line.  "Depends on what you mean by 'fine', girl."

"Stop calling me that," she said automatically.

"What?"  He glanced at her, one black eyebrow arched sardonically.  "'Girl'?  Don't you have more important things to worry about now?"

She folded her arms across her chest, blanket and all.  "It would be nice if you could tell me what those things are."

_I really must be okay if I'm snapping at him like this.  _

He shrugged indifferently, but she caught the flash of pain in his eyes.  

"Well?"

He whirled around, teeth bared.  "You're talking to a werewolf here, not a foot slave."

She didn't cower, like she knew he wanted her to.  He wasn't going to hurt her, not after he had gone through all that trouble to save her from the faceless brother named Sesshoumaru and a whole swarm of werewolves.  Not after he had taken her with him, to this strange house that smelled like copper and raspberries.  Not when...

..._she wasn't human.  No._

"I am."

"What?"

"I said I am!"  She clenched her fists.  "I'm human," she repeated.  "I am." 

He said nothing, just watched her with his strange eyes.

"Your brother," she pointed at him, arm trembling.  "Sesshy something or other.  He's crazy.  He was lying, wasn't he?"

Inuyasha laughed sardonically.  "My _brother_ might be crazy, but he never lies."

"That's insane!"

He looked away.  "Typical reaction for a girl like you."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

He shrugged.  She huffed in annoyance.

"I should get going now, then, since you don't need me anymore."  _You ass, _she added silently.  She scrambled to her feet, the blankets that were gathered around her shoulders falling just long enough to cover her knees.  She wrapped them around herself tightly, trying to fend off the cold.  "You pervert, what did you do to my clothes?!"

His answer came snide and deliberately provoking.  "I tore them off."

Blood rushed to her face, and she was glad he was still turned away from her.  "You are one sick puppy, you know that?"

He was suddenly in front of her, so fast that she blinked, and then he grabbed ahold of her arms, fingers gripping just hard enough to hurt.  Anger flickered like fireflies in his eyes.  "Don't push it, wench."

Anger made her stupid.  "Let go of me this instant!"  Air stirred cold around her bare shoulders, and heat rose to her cheeks.  Her hand ached to slap him, but they were busy holding up the heavy blankets, which were now slipping precariously lower.  _Damnit.  _"Let go!"  She heaved violently, kicked at him with a bare foot.  His fingers loosened as he fell backwards with a surprised grunt.  She was suddenly looking down at him as he sprawled loosely on the floor.

Shock, or maybe wearied expectation, flared in amber eyes, and he lowered his face; silver hid the line of brow and jaw and nose in shadow.  The blanket slipped from nerveless fingers.

_I pushed him down.  I pushed a **werewolf **down._

He looked up.  She started towards him, hand reaching out in startled apology.  "Inuyasha, are you—"

—_Okay?_

The blanket puddled in a spread of cream and white folds on the carpet.  _Oh my god—_

She felt the heat of his gaze sliding along her skin, real and intimate.  Blood flared on cheeks in a rush of warmth, and she stooped down to the floor so fast that it made her dizzy, trying to ignore him, sitting there, so goddamn _casual _in his observation.  Her whole body felt hot, and it wasn't just because of shame, it was because—_hell, I don't even want to admit it to myself—_

"STOP STARING AT ME!" she shrieked.  The cloth, which had felt like hay used to feed cows only a few minutes ago, now slid like pure silk against her skin.  Her voice was scratchy with embarrassment.  She gave the blanket a violent jerk, as if by pure will she could somehow hold it in place.  _You fall one more time, and just watch what I'll do, you asshole._

God.  Here she was, screaming obscenities at her _blanket_, of all things.  

"Werewolves enjoy being in their natural forms, you know."  Inuyasha sounded amused.  She would have gladly given her right arm to scratch his eyes out at that moment.  "Why are humans so easily embarrassed?"

"You—!" she seethed.

"Wait."  He shook his head, lips curving into a bitter line in the semi-darkness.  "You're _not_ human.  I keep on forgetting that."

"Oh yeah?"  She crouched down until she was eye level with him.  "Then what am I?"  She made her voice skeptical, trying to provoke some reaction out of him.

He ignored her.  "You can't be.  Otherwise you wouldn't have survived..."

_Survived what?_

His hand shot out, and she gave a surprised squeak as fingers closed around her wrist.  Her other hand had a death grip on theblanket, and when he jerked her forward, it stayed, thank god.

"Look."  His finger traced a shivery line of warmth on the tender skin of her forearm.  "It's still not healed yet."

_The cuts....  _Silvery crescent-shaped marks, slightly reddened.  Inuyasha drew a nail along one edge of a particularly large one, and she made a small pain sound.  It stung, like a prick of rose thorns, but there was no blood.

_"You marked her."_

_Sesshoumaru.  His silver hair trailed onto the floor, shining and flowing like a river of precious metals.  His breath whispered warm against her neck._

_"Fool.  You are honor bound to her now."_

His hands drew her closer.  She went unwillingly.  Or so she told herself.

_"She's going through it right now."_

Her breath hissed out.  "Stop it."  She tried to make her voice commanding, but it came out small, a breathy whisper.  He ignored her, a frown marring thick black brows, and when he jerked her wrists up it wasn't gentle. 

"Hey!  Watch it!"  She tried to yank her hand back.  "You're hurting me!"

"Goddamn woman, hold still!"  His fingers trapped her arm to him, harsh and bruising.  He darted forward in one quick motion, nose twitching like a rabbit's, or a dog's, or a _wolf's_, for that matter—

****

"_Ow!_"

"Feh," he muttered, sharp teeth grown to his bottom lip.  Ivory white and gleaming—

_For all things holy, are those **fangs**?!_

"Inuyasha!"  Fear made her voice high, wispy.  She wound her free hand through his long hair, and yanked, just hard enough to let him know she meant business.  It was soft, like cornsilk, and she tried not to think about how warm it was in the grip of her hand, or how close he had pulled her, or how ticklish his nose was as he sniffed along the curve of her inner arm...

Or how much it hurt when his teeth broke through the tender skin of her wrist.

The scream stuck somewhere in the back of her throat.  He had stilled, and her fingers were still tangled in his hair, wound through that shining silver river.  His breath was hot against her wrists, and the something odd stung behind her eyes.  

_He **bit** me._

Hysteria stirred in her chest.  Warmth trickled down her forearm, but she didn't look, couldn't look, eyes frozen on a distant spot on the ceiling.  The stucco ceiling.  If she stared hard enough she could make out an upside down elephant with rabbit ears among the dots.  

She slumped down, defeated.  Everything that had happened during the past day or two—_has it only been a day?  it feels more like a week, or even a century_—roiled deep in her throat, hot and choking and suffocating.  Wetness stung in her eyes, and she didn't try to wipe the tears away.  But she didn't let them spill over, either.

"That...hurt, you know."  Her voice came thick and heavy.  

Inuyasha's head jerked up, and he tossed her wrist aside, cursing.  She didn't look at him, only away at the ceiling, where the elephant had long since dissolved into a blur of white and gray dots.

"Damnit.  I was only trying to—"

She glanced at him, quickly, before snapping her head away in shame.  _He's seen me naked.  And now he's seen me cry._

Somehow the second seemed infinitely worse.

Her wrist ached distantly.  "Inuyasha."

He let loose another string of profanities.  "I'm sorry."  The two words came out forced, but sincere.  "I should've asked you before—it's just that I'm not use to—"

She smiled, faintly.  "Human courtesies?"

"Yeah."  He was silent for a little.  "Aren't you going to ask me why I did that?"

She looked down at her hands.  The small imprint of teeth showed only a little red around the edges.  "Some werewolf thing?" she asked, finally.

He shook his head.  "I had to know for sure."  He tucked one hand into the folds of her blanket, twisting it into a tight ball of wool.  "You were—_are_—a...witch."

She watched him from the close distance of the little room.  He had huddled closer, almost unknowingly, eyes down and bare arm brushing hers.  His breath came slow, even, but hers was quick, and shallow, like a drowning girl who had just been tossed a life raft.  Her blanket was wrapped securely around her shoulders, but the wooden bedpost bruised hard against her back.

"...You had to bite my wrist to tell me _that?_"

"I said I'm sorry!" he growled, shooting forward into a defensive stance.  "Aren't you even surprised?  Jesus, it's not like I tell every girl I meet in a bar she's a goddamn _witch_, for christsakes, and definitely not one so powerful—"

"Powerful?  _Me?_"  She laughed, but something echoed in the back of her mind, a distant memory of inane afternoons and fried Chinese sausages and gnarled, liver-spotted hands—

"My grandmother always said...." She looked down at her hands, not knowing how to continue.

He tilted his strange eyes her way, gaze searching and curious.  "What?"

"She said that...my family...my mother and my grandma and me are supposed to be descendants of powerful..._mikos._"  The word tasted strange on her tongue.  "What everyone else calls bruja, or wise-woman, or witch.  Or devil's spawn, for that matter."  She shrugged.  "I never believed her though.  Thought she was a little..." Kagome tapped her temple.  "...Batty up here."

"Why didn't you?"

"She said the gift skipped every other generation.  In her case it had skipped both my mom and her.  It went missing for a while, and it was supposed to manifest in me."  She laughed in self-deprecation.  "But it didn't.  And at first I believed her, you know.  But then when I found out I couldn't cast any of those cool magic spells I saw on T.V...." The mirth faded off her face.  "Silly, huh?"

He snorted.  "Yes."

She sighed.  "You know you're not supposed to agree with a girl when she asks you a question like that."

"Oh for christsake.  I don't need any of your pmsing right now, Kagome."

"Pmsing?  _Pmsing!  _You sexist son of a—"

"Stop it!"  He grabbed her arm again, the one unscathed, and shook her, hard enough that the tendons in her shoulder gave a protesting squeak of pain.  "This explains it all.  Your..._miko _blood...you still even _alive_ at all..." He gave a huff of bitter laughter.  "Unfortunatelyfor me."

"...That's a rude thing to say, Inuyasha!"

"Why should I care?"

"Because _you're _the one to get me into this mess in the first place.  The _least_ you can do is be polite about it!"

"Damnit!" he snarled, so close that she could've scratched his eyes out.  "Try and make this a little easier for me, why don't you!"

"'Why should I care'?" she snapped, imitating his previous tone.  "You're not the one that's in deep shit here!"

He hissed.  "You don't know deep shit yet, bitch."

She leaned close, too angry to care that the man in front of her could've torn her apart in the blink of an eye and not lost any sleep over it.  "Well then.  What are you waiting for?  Go ahead and hit me, you bastard!"

Silence, and then a tremor ran through his tense frame; his eyes widened to shock and soft light, dawning in some distant memory of a time long gone.  His grip on her arm loosened, fell away like cut strings.  She was kneeling in front of him, his breath warm against her hair—and yet he didn't see her at all.

_Go ahead and hit me!_

"...Inuyasha?"

His eyes snapped to hers, feral and violent.  Something moved behind the amber stillness; the air strained, crackled like distant thunder.  "You wanted to know what happened, _miko._"

"Yes," she whispered, suddenly too terrified to look, or move, away.

_I don't._

He smiled.  The fangs gleamed through like slender ivory daggers.  "Be ready."

_"Be ready," he whispered, and then—_

Heat spat out in long, writhing tongues of flame.  Distantly came his voice, hard and unpitying, but still there might have been a small thread of compassion.  

_"I'm sorry."_

His power writhed around her, riding the air in the small room until it was like trying to breathe in pure liquid metal, a force field of static electricity that sparked in tiny frissons of pain along her bare shoulders.  The blanket twisted hard around her thighs, jerked unknowingly by her own hands, but she didn't notice, could only choke on hot smell of wolves—like a roiling mass of fur that smothered in her mouth, her nose—and Inuyasha had collapsed besides her, the hands held out in front of his face slightly furred.  His eyes had taken on a strange red under-tint, a light crimson that stained the front of his face with _(unholy)_ power, not seen, but felt.  She pitched forward again, only to be caught by those clawed hands, and when the fear surged through her veins like a wash of icy water, she couldn't find the strength to push him away.  

_Don't—the claws—_

She waited for the sting, and the burning.  None came, but he snarled suddenly, and the sound rang through her deafened ears, harsh and unyielding.  Claws tightened but didn't break through skin—when she looked up to his eyes he was still human, still real, still believable.  The skin of his cheek was smooth underneath her fingertips, and the look on his face was unguarded shock; naked, raw—

_pain._

"_I'm sorry."_

She saw, in a cold torrent of revelation and knowledge and bleeding, wintry fear—

_The ceiling of the club exploded around them, and the shape in his arms lashed out with a clawed hand._

_(No.)_

_He caught her arm, the arm that now writhed underneath his fingers like churning waves of the ocean, during a storm of violence and electric death.  Fur sprouted, her pelt emerging, ripping through the hideously cute top she wore.  Torn white cotton fell away below them, and the snarls of pursuing wolves reached his ears.  He snarled himself, a sound of anger, frustration, and pure, unadulterated hate, then launched atop the darkened houses and through the forests of the night._

_(That isn't—)_

_The bundle of fur howled.  The hairs on the back of his neck prickled in dread._

_(I'm insane, aren't I.)_

_He dropped her onto the damp forest grounds.  The spark of violet in her eyes was one of bloodlust; the weak, human female that he had just met at the bar had gone in a rush of heated fur and bloodied nails.  _

_His nails._

_(Yes.  That must be it.)_

_The wolf snapped sharp teeth at him; he withdrew his hand, foreboding twisting like poison in the bottom of his stomach.  _

_"...You can't control yourself."_

_(How can that be me if I can't even remember?)_

_He cursed, and even the sound was tired.  _

_"Damnit, girl."_

_(Don't call me that.)_

_Leaves crinkled beneath his knees like faded newspaper, old and yellowed with time.  "Come back to yourself," he demanded, yanking her snout to him.  The wolf launched itself at him, jaws snapping and smelling of uncontrollable hunger.  Inuyasha caught her easily, seemingly delicate human hands locking around her forelegs, and he shook her.  Hard._

_"Girl..."_

_(...)_

_He cursed again.  She tried to snap off his fingers.  _

_"Girl!"_

_(Stop it.)_

_"Wake up!"_

_(Leave me alone.)_

_"KAGOME!"_

She came back into herself in that same cold torrent of frozen fire.  His hair tickled her face like wild grasses against bare legs, and she tried to breathe, but his hair got in the way, all those fine strands of silver that she couldn't help but snuffle into her nose.  His power had slackened, draining out of the room like water, and the temperature had plunged back into its previous state of sickening warmth.  Her limbs jerked unconsciously.  Panic writhed in her chest.

"Kagome."

Her hand latched on to the cloth at his shoulders, burying itself through cotton folds.  "You bastard," she half-whispered, half-screamed, and her voice cracked despite herself.  She grabbed him hard around his neck, slender fingers clawing at his exposed throat in violent grieving.  "You asshole, you _freak—"_

_You've made me a freak too._

"Kagome—" He didn't raise a hand to defend himself, only sat there, regret and anger laced through his voice.  "I'm sorry."

She tried to scratch at him harder, but her nails were human, too weak, too soft to do any good.  Shock swarmed in her head, a massive buzzing of adrenaline that plunged a thousand needles into her temples.  "_I...hate...you..._" It came out as a half sob, and more, but she hid herself away, into the folds of his shirt, and tried to dig her fingers through his throat at the same time.  "_I...don't want...to be..."_

_A **freak**._

His arms went around her, warm and almost tentative.  Was he trying to comfort her?

_Because it's not working, _she thought hysterically.  _Stop it stop it stop it.  _He yelled something against her hair, but it was lost in the numbing torrent of shock.  _Oh grandma, if you could only be here to see me.  _Her thoughts chased each other around her head like drunken monkeys.  _How you would laugh.  _She clutched at his shoulder, his hair.  _Your beloved, precious granddaughter.  What is she now?  _Terror strengthened her voice; panic stole all rationality.  "Let _go _of me—!" and she tried to shove him away, but his arms held on to her, a grip too strong for her to break.  _A werewolf, a circus freak, oh god oh god— _The air cloyed thick in her lungs, and cold sweat trailed down her forehead.  She struggled against him, hopelessly, and then in a flash of that frozen fire she could feel _something_, some distant force manifesting from within herself.  She stilled, and her voice came out choked, "_Inuyasha!" _but it was too late for her to fight it.

Even as she did, it would still win.  

_Inuyasha—_

But she fought anyway, teeth clenched until her jaws ached like holy hell, nerves tightened to breaking point, but still the force trickled down, like water seeping from a crack in the dam, through hands, thighs, feet.  _My hands.  _Her hands were first to go, and when she saw the nails thickening into hooks of ivory, and the dark brown fur flowing onto her forearms, and the knuckles cracking, warping into inhuman joints—

And she screamed, long and hard and scratchy in her throat, lashing out with wolf limbs and a furred tail until she caught Inuyasha across his cheek, claws scarring four long gashes down his skin, and the sticky red worms ran down into his shirt, and she was still screaming, and screaming, because she knew if she stopped the thing that was her and yet wasn't her would come and take her over completely like the feared monster-under-the-bed, except this monster was _herself_, and that was when he hit her across her face, and then everything went

_—Numb._       

:::=:::=:::

**AN**:  Don't you just love cliffhangers and gratuitous violence? 

(This chapter also known as:  Kagome Goes Nutty—Not to Mention Furry.)

Meanwhile!

...the chapters just keep getting longer...and longer...and longer... (and the poor author faints dead away from trying to keep up with her crazed muse, who, incidentally, is on speed.)


	4. Drift

**Starbreak**

**AN:  **Confused?  I hope this chapter explains some things (or a _lot _of things), but if it doesn't, then there's a general summary at the end.  Thanks to those who left comments, esp. the longer ones.  Helpful, indeed. ^^ (Don't forget that I'm borrowing werewolf stuff from Laurell K. Hamilton and Kelley Armstrong here.)  _And _I think I have an idea as to when the 'cross-dressing nymphomaniac' is going to show up.  Deargodrunaway.  O.o

**Chapter Four: Drift**

"Hello.  My name is Inuyasha.  I'm your average citizen werewolf, and people say they enjoy my company, except most of them are usually too scared to even breathe when they're around me.  Oh yeah, and I eat defenseless human girls as a full-time hobby."—**Inuyasha**

:::=:::=:::

Kagome _hated _swimming.

There was a first time for everything, and her first time had started out pleasant enough.  She and her family—joking, laughing, excited—excited to escape from the mainland valley of their home to the sun-swept beaches of Japan.  The taste of chocolate ice cream that day had been new and thrilling in her mouth; the gulls with their funny stick-legs and their dust-gray wings had called to her with the uncontained joy of the free; and the heat of the midday sun had been like an overly enthusiastic bonfire, hot and leaping and primitive.  Maybe the tide had been unusually high, and the ocean current strangely strong, but little Kagome didn't noticed, nor did she particularly care.  And it was so fun, at first, to splash around in the sea-glass water and taste the salty air on her tongue and shriek in laughter as wave upon wave swirled around her ankles.

_the birds had wings _

But then one pulled her down further, harder, faster than any other had, a raging sea goddess—and she'd been sucked under the raging riptide, gone in a trembling heartbeat, disappeared to thrash in suffocating desperation as the ocean tossed her and turned her and even let her break the surface before shoving her back down again, like some sadistic monster who had had nothing else to do but play cruel cat-and-mouse games with helpless children.  

_I've always wanted wings_

They had pulled her out, dripping, shivering, coughing up salt water and seaweed.  How long had she gone under?  How long did she stay in that silent, airless vacuum, unable to swim, unable to breathe, unable to even panic?     

_Too long._

_Just like now._

_Under too long..._

Whoever said that coming back to consciousness was like attempting to swim with ten-pound weights tied to all four limbs had _no _idea how right they were.

She groaned, tried to breathe, then realized that she was lying facedown on some soft surface.  And that there was a pillow in her face.  And that the anchorwoman on VTV was elaborating on some somber news, because that trademark perky voice of hers had taken on a properly depressed note.

_"Coming up on the late-night news: In a disturbing similar murder scene to that of Kalen Mirdloy two days earlier, twenty-four year old Jasmi Coral was found dead at the old abandoned mine-shaft near Lakewood.  Police refused to reveal anything beyond the victim's name and age..."_

She groaned again, pushed at her pillow.  Her joints ached like she had a severe case of arthritis.  Not that she actually _knew_ how arthritis felt like...

_But that's how grandma went out.  Too much time weighing heavy on her old bones.  At least, that's what she told me..._

_Then the next day we held her funeral._

"Kagome!  Are you better?"  Sango's voice came from above, soft and concerned.  It was hard to tell that she was a werewolf.  Unlike Inuyasha.  Inuyasha had shoved that particular bit of knowledge into her face—literally.

It hurt to breathe.  So she just laid there, eyes closed and hands ceasing their frantic scrabbling.  The pillow smelled of raspberries.  

_Sango sounds like a raspberry type of person._

Her head ached.  A lot.   

_How could a woman who smells like raspberries possibly be a howl-at-the-moon, fur-growing, flesh-chomping werewolf?_  The thought passed through the haze of her mind, totally irrelevant, yet somehow so nagging in its importance that she couldn't help but puzzle on it. 

_Am I that scared to wake up?_

The answer came from her inner child, honest and unashamed.  _Yes._

Kagome propped her head sideways, tried to blink the drowsiness out of her eyes.  Someone had dressed her while she had been sleeping—_sleeping?  more like fainted-dead-away—_and she silently thanked them.  Probably Sango.  As long as it wasn't Inuyasha she was grateful. 

"Kagome...?" She rolled her eyes up, trying to catch a brief glimpse of her face.  "...Are you going to eat me?" There was a stunned silence from Sango, then a burst of laughter when she realized that Kagome had made a joke.  "No, no.  Don't worry.  Werewolves are more civilized than that."  A frown trickled into her voice.  "Although that probably isn't what Inuyasha would have you believe..." "Inuyasha?"  Kagome jolted up, and Sango took a surprised step back.  She had the face of someone who would've been stunning if she only tried—high cheekbones, full mouth, doe eyes—the timeless, classic appeal of the truly beautiful.  As it was, Kagome could only guess at what kind of primitive shampoo the woman used.  That was, if she used any shampoo at all.  "Where is he?" "Out hunting." Kagome swallowed.  Hard.  "'_Hunting_'?" "Actually, he's just trying to work off some anger." "He's hunting.  Where are we if Inuyasha can actually go out the door and _hunt_?"  She jumped up, ignoring Sango's protests that she should rest, she mustn't strain herself, and darted to the window.  Pastel moonlight touched the dark room with a gentle glow as she threw aside floral print curtains; midnight greeted her, a wide, quiet meadow of wild grasses and late-summer blooms.  "The forests are a ten-minute walk from here."  Sango had come up from behind her, voice quiet, even a little wary.  "Faster still for a werewolf..." Kagome stiffened.  "Tell me we're still in Virginia." Sango laughed.  "You're not in some distant third world country named Kikwana, if that's what you're worried about." _Is that actually a place?_ she wanted to ask, but thought better of it.  "Then where are we?" "Virginia, but a few hours drive from the city," Sango said.  "Still faster for a werewolf..." Kagome leaned against the cold glass, let the quiet seep into her for a moment.  "Inuyasha brought me here?" "Yes."  Sango sighed.  "First time I see him in two years and he comes bearing a wolf-pup—" She froze.  "...He's told you, hasn't he?" "Just before.  But not everything." There were some sounds of shuffling behind her, of footsteps all but muffled on carpet.  When Sango spoke again it came from farther away.  "I'm sorry."  And she did sound sorry. Kagome leaned her forehead against the window, staring out into the overgrown wilderness.  An invisible breeze trembled through wild stems, and slender stalks of grass danced to its luring song.  The shadows had yet to take on threatening shapes, but maybe, if she stared long enough....  "It's okay," she whispered, even though it wasn't.  She knew it would never be okay, not anymore. _I'm a survivor, right?  That's what grandma always told me..._ But no one had ever said anything about surviving lycanthropy. Sango cursed, and it sounded too strange, too bitter, to be coming from that mellifluous voice.  "Inuyasha was careless.  It's going to get him killed one of these days." Something strained at her memory.  "His brother...Sesshoumaru...he said that if I wasn't human, I would be dead already—" Kagome turned around, slowly.  The T.V. emitted enough of an alien blue glow for her to see the pained look on Sango's face.  "What did he mean?" She sighed.  "He meant exactly what he said." _"If she was human, she would already be dead. Brother."_

"But everyone says that lycanthropy can be passed down from wolf to human safely..."

"Ah."  She tsked.  "That's where humans are wrong."

"What—"

"Lycanthropy is like a disease."  Sango frowned in the darkness.  "No, that's not right.  It's not a negative thing—but it's not a gift, either.  It's just something we have to live with, like loving chocolate, or being gay, or being Christian."  She tucked down the hem of her knee-length skirt and sat, ladylike and straight-backed.  "We were legalized five years ago, but some people still see us as circus freaks."

Guilt stung.  "What does that have to do with anything?"

Sango shook her head.  "We were hunted, you know, before the politicians up in Washington decided to take the morally right turn.  Bounty hunters could shoot us on sight, the common people feared us, everyone thought we were monsters—" She looked at Kagome, hands tight in her lap and the glimmer of honey brown eyes barely visible in the darkness of the room.  "—Don't you remember?  You are surely old enough?"

Kagome nodded, half in fear, the other half in fascination.  "I am," she said, quietly.

Sango gave a tired effort of a smile.  "'Addison vs. Clark'.  A powerful senator's daughter was bitten by a vampire, and he wasn't going to sit around and let those barbaric vampire hunters go after his baby.  No, of course not.  So he took it to court.  And it was no surprise that he won.

"So that was when everything supernatural was legalized.  The Supreme Court, the White House, they acknowledged us as people, gave us human rights and the protection of their laws.  Vampires, shape-shifters, witches, faeries..."

"Me and my brother thought it was super cool, back then."  Kagome smiled a little, remembering their excitement.  _Hey mom, does this mean that we can go around and actually make friends with the werewolves who live next door?  Huh?  Huh?_

"But they're still scared of us.  The humans, I mean."  Sango directed a piercing glance her way.  "Even you were—and still are, a little."

She nodded, not even trying to deny it.

"You're right when you say that everyone believes lycanthropy can be passed down from a wolf to a human without any lethal consequences.  Part of that is true.  A wolf _can _pass down his heritage..." Sango's voice was so soft that the quiet murmurs of the T.V. nearly drowned her out.  "But..."

_She's only telling me this because I'm like...her, now.  _Kagome shivered, and she knew Sango had noticed.  But she didn't say anything, only continued on in her explanation.

"You heard what Sesshoumaru said.  Inuyasha scratched you, in his wolf form.  He was cocky, wanted to scare you a little."  She shook her head.  "So he deliberately shifted, claws only.  Then he accidentally...marked you.  And now..." Sango took a deep breath, exhaled loudly.  "...Here you are."

"A werewolf."  

_It's not so hard to say aloud._

"Most humans can't take the transformation.  They're scratched by one of us, and their blood rejects the wolf change, and then they just..." Sango made a motion with her hands.  "Fizzle out.  Like fireworks."

Another shudder crept down her shoulders.  "That's not what the media says!" Kagome's voice came out steady, even a little indignant.  _Good for me._

"They don't know.  Only shapeshifters do."  Sango was still looking steadily at her, gaze unblinking.  "Most of us are careful; we don't go around marking humans, and we're only contagious in wolf form.  That's why we've never told humans, because if we did they would undo the laws the Supreme Court case established five years ago.  We don't want to go back to living like terrorists, not when we can have our relative peace."

"So you keep it all a big, bad secret," Kagome finished for her.

"Yes."  Sango absently dug fingers through the white lace spread draped over the arm of her sofa.  "Being a werewolf is usually hereditary, unlike what we've lead humans to believe.  It's only when we break skin of people like you that the change-over from another race is possible."

"And humans aren't one of those races."  Funny how accepting and calm she was being here, especially since she, _technically_, wasn't even a human to begin with.

"Right.  In your case..." Sango frowned.  "Inuyasha said something about mikos?"

"Yeah."  Kagome collapsed onto the couch herself, trying not to feel the way Sango's gaze pinned her from across the coffee table.  She changed the subject, not wanting to talk about it.  "Won't it get out, then?  I mean, not all weres can be so careful.  What if they scratched a human and the human died?  Then wouldn't everything be...?"

Sango lowered her head in the darkness.  "It doesn't happen often, but when it does, the pack...takes care of it."

"Then—"

"Shhh!"  Sango had whipped her head around to the television, and was now watching the glowing screen intently.

"_Now to our top news item of the hour.  In a grisly crime scene just discovered today, twenty-four-year-old law student Jasmi Coral was found dead at the old abandoned mine shaft near Lakewood.  Police think this case might be related to the murder of Kalen Mirdloy, also found in his cabin at Lakewood.  The possible relation between the two?_" 

"...Oh, _no_," Sango whispered.

"_Coral and Mirdloy were both lycanthropes, or werewolves.  This was previously unknown knowledge, but in a statement today, the head of police expressed their lack of information involving the two cases.  Apparently the killer, or killers, left no evidence upon leaving the scene of the crime for both shapeshifters..._"

"...Sango?"

"_The question that remains unanswered: what persons could've killed two lycanthropes like Coral and Mirdloy with not a hint of any apparent struggle—?_"

The air stirred in the room, only a curl of breeze that left her hair unruffled and the curtains undisturbed.  Sango stabbed at the remote with a stiff finger, snapping off the T.V and plunging the room into pitch black.  And yet—

She could still see—the tired frown on Sango's face, the mushroom print of the lamp cover, the faint discoloration of old, eggshell-white walls, a small smudge of cherry on the ceiling that had faded to a dull crimson, the ancient brick chimney that looked like it hadn't been used in centuries—

Hell, she could always blame it on the carrots and the diet plan Akina had been so insistent at putting her through...    

Sango slid to her feet, began pacing around the living room with a muffled anger that prickled along Kagome's arms like electricity.  She shivered unconsciously.

"The last thing the pack needs right now..." Sango nearly growled, and it sounded strange, coming from that gentle voice.  For the first time, Kagome caught a brief glimpse of werewolf underneath that calm exterior.

"...Werewolves...killed...?"

"Yes."  She stopped pacing, but even standing still her aura exuded restless energy.  "The first one was two days ago.  Kalen...I didn't really like him..." Sighing, Sango turned to the collection of bronze picture frames that decorated the walls.  "But he was pack."

"I'm sorry," Kagome said, feeling horribly inadequate.  _If only I could do something about it..._

_Oh ye gods.  Here I've been turned into a lycanthrope and instead of throwing hysterics I'm comforting some woman I've barely known for an hour about her murdered furry friends._

It was shock, and stupidity, and superstition.  The naïve part of her liked to think, maybe if she didn't dwell on _it_, maybe if she forced all thoughts of _it_ away, _it_ would truly leave her alone; leave her normal, human, and un-furry the next time the moon reached its zenith in the sky.  

It was a foolish notion.  But it was one that was working, or at least keeping her calm, and non-hysterical.  One thing she had learned long ago was to never mess with something if it was working.

"And Jasmi...she was pack too."  She touched a picture with a bitten nail, tracing the contours of a girl's face, pretty and young and shining.  "And a friend."

Kagome sank back into the couch, trying to keep her head from spinning away into a confused infinity.  "Why would anyone want to kill werewolves?"  But the answer to the question occurred to her as soon as the words left her mouth.

"Human hate groups.  Radical bounty hunters.  People who still see us as unnatural oddities of nature."  Sango sighed.  "Sesshoumaru is not going to be pleased."

Kagome looked down at her hands.  _Human _hands.  

_Maybe if I pray they'll stay that way for the rest of my life._

Of course, it wasn't that simple.  Nothing ever was.  But the little girl in her wanted to believe in happy, fairy-tale endings so badly...

Sango froze, a complete stilling of motion, before stepping around the chintz end table to the doorway.  When she opened it a warm wind streamed in, tousling her hair out into long, raven ribbons.  "Inuyasha is coming back," she said, quietly.

The room was silent.  Kagome sat glued to the edge of the couch and silently congratulated herself on not screaming and running the hell away the moment the name _Inuyasha _had left Sango's mouth.

He came in so quietly that at first she didn't notice.  But then all of a sudden there were two shadows in the doorway, instead of one.  Her breath caught on a strangest combination of both fear and anger.

_I'm not afraid, _she stubbornly told herself.  But she was.  _Damn._

"Feeling better, Inuyasha?"  The way Sango said it rang half-mocking and half-concerned.  A light flicked on, soft and luminescent, and it was all Kagome needed to see the regret in Inuyasha's eyes before it was gone in a flash of gold and black.  

"Hello," Kagome said quietly.

He acknowledged her with a jerk of his head, then looked away quickly.  

"Sit," Sango ordered.  

He sat, much to Kagome's surprise.

"Now—" Sango cut off in mid-sentence, whirled around to the nearby hallway that lead to the bedrooms.  Or at least that was what Kagome presumed.  _One of the bedrooms where I—_she severed the train of thought.  _Don't mess with what's working, don't mess with what's working.  _

"Who is it?" Inuyasha didn't bother trying to keep the note of curiosity out of his voice.  "You living with someone, Sango?"

"Yes," she replied, words only a little testy.  "It's not what you think.  Especially not after Miroku—" She shook her head violently before turning back to the hallway.  "You're still supposed to be sleeping, you know."  Her voice had gone gentle, and soothing, like a gurgling stream.  It was, in fact, as un-werewolf as anything Kagome had ever heard.  "It's past your bed time."

Someone stepped out into the warm pool of light.  

_A dwarf.  Jesus god, what else does Sango have living under her roof—_

Then she realized it wasn't a dwarf.  All dwarves were short, like this one, and some (though not many) were sinfully cute, but dwarves simply did not possess any kind of bushy-tail-gene.  Or tiny feet that looked like a cross between human feet and fox paws.  Or flaming red hair that was tied up into an untidy knot at the top of a little head.

Kagome's nose twitched before she caught herself.  _Am I **smelling **him?_

The little werefox landed a saucer-shaped gaze on Kagome.  Evidently he decided she looked safe, because he started forward, head down but peering at her shyly through auburn lashes.  "Hi.  My name is Shippou—" at which point he caught sight of Inuyasha.  His eyes widened until they showed white all around, and he darted behind Sango, clutching at her skirt and making small, high-pitched sounds of distress.

_How do I know what a werefox smells like?  _

_This is crazy._

_A psycho werewolf, a lady werewolf, a midget werefox, a human-slash-witch-slash-werewolf-freak, and a partridge-in-a-pear-tree._

_Someone wake me up right now before I go crazy myself._

Inuyasha laughed, smile flashing white in the lamplight.  Kagome stared, suddenly riveted by the play of light on his sharp teeth.  "Little bugger afraid of me, eh?"

"Who—who's he?" Shippou squeaked out from around Sango's calves.

"No one."  Sango placed a placating hand on top of the little red head and glared at Inuyasha.  "Just a friend."

"No one's ever called me a 'no one' before, Sango," he growled, but there was a playful edge to it, like he was just poking fun at her.  

Sango's smile faded.  "You're right," she said, quietly.  "I'm sorry."

"Eh—?"

"I'm going to make some coffee," she said softly.  "Shippou, why don't you help me?"  She glanced towards them, eyes shadowed.  "And Inuyasha.  It's about time we told Kagome here about us werewolves, yes?"  Then she left to the kitchen, closing the door gently behind her.

"Feh," he snarled, still not looking at her.

She let a beat of silence go by.  "...So?"

"What?"

"Aren't you going to tell me...whatever?"  Kagome sighed, and propped up her head with her hand.  "Even though I'm looking forward to it about as much as you are..." she muttered.

"I heard that!"

"I know, and I don't care!" she snapped right back, then bit down on her tongue in surprise.  Taking a few breaths, she said, at a well-meaning attempt at peace, "I'm sorry.  It's just that things haven't been all that peachy since..." she gestured with her hand.  "Now let's just try to deal with each other without killing anyone in the process."

He glared suspiciously, but gave a reluctant, "Fine."

"Okay."

"Okay."

"..."

"..."

She heaved a breath.  "Well, go on."

"Feh."  He scowled.  "What's there to tell?"  He picked at his nails, eyeing her from his indolent position on the couch, then leaned forward, baring teeth that were sharper than they had been a minute ago.  "Hello.  My name is Inuyasha.  I'm your average citizen werewolf, and people say they enjoy my company, except most of them are usually too scared to even breathe when they're around me."  Claws snicked out.  "Oh yeah, and I eat defenseless human girls as a full-time hobby."

The admission hurt, but she forced it out anyway.  "I'm not human, remember?"

"Damn.  I forgot."  But he smiled.  "Did I mention every once in a while I clean my teeth on wolf pups?"

"Inuyasha, be nice," Sango's voice warned from the kitchen.

She cocked her head in a mock-curious way.  "I didn't know wolves practiced cannibalism."  

"Only me."  His eyes sparked in challenge.

"Inuyasha! Stop it!" Sango yelled, and the sound came loud and clear even through the kitchen door.

"Stop what?  I'm only doing what you told me to do!"

"She's one of us now.  You marked her.  You bring her over.  She's _your _responsibility.  Responsibility does _not _mean trying to scare the living daylights out of her.  Understood?"

"I'm not scared," Kagome said flatly.

"Whatever."  Inuyasha leaned back, frustration flaring in the air around him.  He was leaking his aura—that stifling, supernatural power that all shapeshifters possessed.  Kagome could feel it, like heat from a furnace.  But all furnaces eventually burned out, and this furnace was as likely to do so as she had of living out the normal, boring life of someone who was _not_ terminally furry ever again.

"Inuyasha!"

"Yeah, yeah, mom," he muttered.

Sango gave a muffled sigh, her own anger deflating like a balloon with no air.  "Now please.  Have a little kindness on Kagome and tell her about our glorious werewolf society, no?"  Her voice was honey sweet—only she made the word _glorious _sound like something far, far worse.  Kagome swallowed nervously. 

Inuyasha stared at her through a glass vase of violets.  She stared right back.

"This is stupid," he muttered under his breath.

"I agree," she muttered along with him.  "But tell me anyway."

He heaved a disgruntled sigh, then pointed at himself.  "Powerful—werewolf," he said, annunciating each syllable separately, as if talking to a two-year-old child.

She narrowed her eyes, then pointed at herself.  "Not—stupid."

"Powerful—werewolf—who—can—kick—your—"

"Inuyasha!"  Sango again.

He scowled some more.  "Fine, fine.  Jesus, she's no fun."

_I can't believe **this **is the guy that—_

Kagome regarded him with frustration clouding her vision.  "If you're not going to be helpful, then please, take me back to my college dorm."_  I even said 'please'.  That can't hurt, right?_    "Then you won't ever have to deal with me again.  Fair deal?"  

Then she realized something with a sort of concerned shiver.

_Akina is going to be worried..._ __

"Feh!" he spat out.  "You think being a were is that easy?"

"No, but—"

He leaned towards her, hands spread out on the coffee table.  They were human again, not clawed.  "Sorry kiddo, but you're gonna have to stay with me for a long, long time." 

_"Fool.  You are honor bound to her now."_

She stifled the sudden urge to yell.  "What?  That's it?  Not even a 'sorry, but I've just changed the course of your life by accidentally scratching you while in my contagious wolf-form'?  Just 'you're gonna have to stay with me'?"  He had fired her anger again, and it roiled around in the back of her mind like a violent storm.  "I'm a _shape-shifter_, and it's all because of you, and that's _all _you have to say!?"

"Trust me, I want this about as much as you do," he said, but she saw him turn away with shadowed eyes.

"But this is already your life."  Her anger died out so abruptly it was like someone had taken a hose to the fire of her rage.  "You're a werewolf, always have been.  You're not a struggling college student who's living three thousand miles away from home..." Her voice had gone soft, lost, like a wanderer with no place to call her own.  When she looked up, Inuyasha was watching her with that same hard golden gaze, but his mouth had lost its arrogant curl.  

"If I could take it back, I would."  He offered the words to her, and she knew that they were the closest thing that she would ever receive as an apology from this strange, silver haired werewolf with his bitter laugh and his jaded eyes.  "But there's nothing we can do to change shit."

"...I know."

"Then we can get to other things." The words were brusque, but the way he said it was almost gentle.  "Do you remember what Sesshoumaru said?"

"He said a lot of things."

He shook his head, and the mane of silver hair swayed with him.  "About being honor-bound."

She laughed, and it sounded strange, forced, even to her.  "I was a little busy growing fur, you know."

He gave a semi-amused growl.  She marveled.  _I made him laugh.  Big wow.  _"Might as well start with pack law."

_I want to go home.  _"What's that?"

"Exactly what it sounds like.  It's what forced me to take you with me when I marked you—the ancient system of honor that governs everything that's werewolf: how we eat, how we kill, how we mate, how we live."  He shook his head.  "How we fight."  His voice took on a razor edge.  "Especially the fighting.  Wolves are pack creatures.  Pack means there has to be some order to things, a hierarchy."

"You mean...king and queen and...princess?" Kagome's voice cracked on the last word.  _Princess of the wolves.  How appropriate.  _Her little brother's interest in B-movies had never failed to amuse his sister.  _Except this is as far away from some cheap horror flick as you can get.  _

_And I'm stuck in the middle of it. _

He frowned at her, not understanding her slightly hysterical laughter.  "What's so funny?"  But he didn't give her a chance to answer.  "Anyway.  The hierarchy.  Wolves fight by challenging one another in one-on-one combat.  The loser acknowledges the winner as dominant, and the wolf _everyone _acknowledges as dominant becomes leader—"

"'Dominant'?" she interrupted.

"Stronger.  More powerful.  Higher up in the pack hierarchy.  Simple?"

She sat back.  "Yes."

_Fighting.  _

_But I don't want to fight._

"We are werewolves, lycanthropes.  Shapeshifters.  Those are the names humans know us by."  His voice went quiet, respectful, as if he were about to say something important.  "But among our own people, we are lukoi."

"'Lukoi'," she repeated, and the word rolled off her tongue so smoothly, like butterscotch candy.  _Lukoi._

"The king, or the leader, is Ulfric.  His mate is Lupa.  There's more, but I think that'll do for now.  These are our words."  He cut his eyes towards her.  "Now they're yours, too."

_Lukoi.  Pack._

"We're just one big happy family."  The look on his face was sardonic, only a cut away from the intensity that had been there a second before.  "Welcome, Kagome Higurashi."

_Family?_

"What about you?" she asked, "What are you in the pack?"

He stiffened, face closing off.  "Alpha.  That's all."

"Huh?"  God, she felt stupid.

"I'm an alpha werewolf.  A master werewolf?"  When the look on her face remained the same—confused, dumbfounded, completely lost—he sighed.  "Powerful—werewolf," he said, once against pointing to himself and annunciating carefully.  "Powerful—werewolf—who—can—do—things—that—most—normal—wolves—can't."

"Don't waste your breath," she said.

He growled.  "I'm dominant to most.  I can control the change.  I can call the beast in others.  I can kick anyone's ass if I tried hard enough."

_Jesus, just a little more conceited...  _"Then why aren't you Ulfric?" 

He smiled, and she saw that his teeth had lengthened again.  "That's going to change very, very soon."

_"You were stronger—once.  But that was a long time ago.  You left your pack behind, ran away with your tail tucked between your legs.  You should be happy that I am willing to help you at all!"  _Sango's voice ran through her head like an angry freight train, but the questions she raised were ones Kagome didn't ask—not yet, at least.  She wasn't stupid, and with the mood Inuyasha was in right now...

_How long does it take Sango to make a pot of coffee, anyway?_

"Sango wants to give a master werewolf and his new pup some privacy time together," he said.

She gave a startled jerk.  "How—?"

He laughed.  "You're easy to read, Kagome.  Your scent changes to match what you're thinking, your eyes go over to the kitchen." An amused growl trickled out of his throat.  "Looks like I'm going to have to teach my wolf pup some new tricks."

"Wait a minute!  _Your _pup?  I'm _yours_?"

"Yeah."  He eyed her, mouth twitching.  "Got a problem with that?" 

"The hell I am—"

Laughing.  The bastard was laughing.  "Sorry.  I marked you.  So now you're classified as one of my wolves."

"This is complete—"

"Don't take it personally.  All wolves belong to one alpha or another.  It's standard werewolf procedure for one to lay claim to the newbies."

She groaned, then flopped back onto the pillows.  _This is not my life.  This is not my life.  Some scary werewolf freak did **not **just tell me I am one of 'his wolves' like I'm sort of inanimate object—_

"Are you done whining yet?"  

She whipped her head up, glared at him.  "I am _not _whining," she said dangerously.  "I didn't even _say_ anything."

He snorted.  "You don't need to.  Your scent is annoying enough."

This was getting _way_ too invasive.  "You can tell what I'm thinking just by the way I smell?"

"No, not thoughts, but general emotions, yes.  There are advantages to being a were, you know."

"Well, then.  Please do refrain from trying to read my feelings from now on.  My privacy is something I treasure dearly."

He sighed.  "Okay."

"...That's it?  No argument, no insults, no nothing?"

"Watch it, wench.  I can be just as agreeable as the next one if I want to be."

"Fine."  She huffed out a breath, letting her head fall back onto the sofa.  

"Don't fall asleep on me now."

She spoke without looking at him, too tired to keep her eyes open.  "Why not?"

"Night is the best time for hunting."

"_Hunting?_"  She nearly jumped out of her skin.  "You want _me _to go _hunting_?"

"The faster the better.  We need to present a united front at the reception.  I can't have some wolf pup losing control of herself on me."  There was a frown in his voice.  "Especially not in front of Sesshoumaru."

"'Reception'?  'Control'?  '_We_'?"  And she had thought her head couldn't spin any faster.

"Let's go."

"No!"  If she was whining, she couldn't bring herself to care.  "Can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"Why are you so tired?  You didn't even shift to full-wolf form—"

"That's because you _hit _me!"

"There was nothing else I could do!"

"Oh yeah?"  She folded her arms across her chest, tried to ignore the unpleasant buzzing of her left leg, which had long since fallen asleep.  "I thought you were alpha?  Something about controlling the change?"

"Irritating wench!  I said I could control the change for _myself_!"

She nearly threw up her hands in frustration.  "Tell me one thing.  Why don't I remember when I first...shifted?  And what in heaven _happened_ when I did?"

He averted his eyes.  "Wolf pups aren't in full control of themselves when they first shift.  But that's only during the first change or two," he added quickly, seeing the alarmed look on her face.  "Strong emotion—and blood.  They encourage the change in new pups, but more experienced wolves can leash their beast."

"Their beast?"  Her inner child shrunk at the word.  _Scary._

"The wolf we all become," he said, and his eyes were distant.  "There's only one thing no one can resist, and that's the full moon.  Even the most powerful are turned."  He was quiet for a moment, and when his next words came they were hushed.  "It's a holy time for us."

"So I can't remember because my...beast," she swallowed, "took over me, completely?"

He nodded.  "You changed back after you hunted.  And then you blacked out.  Shapeshifting is exhausting for everyone, except some alphas."  _Like myself.  _He left it unspoken.  Big surprise, that Inuyasha didn't take the opportunity to brag some more.  

"But you'll control your beast eventually."  He spoke again, confident.  "This is just the learning curve."

"Oh."  She kept that one word completely neutral.  No doubt, no fear, no nothing.  He was the only person she could trust, after all.

_Now that's a scary thought._

"In fact, you should be fine the next time you change."

"So if I don't shift if I'm experiencing strong emotion or I'm near blood, I'm okay?"  She sounded skittish.  She hated it when she sounded skittish.

"Yeah.  And then the next time you _do _shift, you'll be a wolf, but your mind will still be human.  You'll remember everything."

"But all that won't count unless I stay human near blood, right?"  The thought of blood made her queasy.  She hated feeling queasy, too.

He nodded.  It occurred to her that they hadn't snapped at each other once in the last ten minutes.  _I'm getting better at communicating with werewolves, yes I am—_

Her head flopped back onto the neck-rest of the sofa.  "Are you going to let me sleep now?"

"No.  Now let's go."

She huffed.  She whined.  She pleaded.  All without a second thought to her dignity.  But in the end, he was the one that won out.  

_Well, if it's any comfort—_

_—at least I've finally found someone who can be as bull-headed as me._

Somehow that didn't seem like a good thing, no matter how she looked at it.  But she dragged herself off of the comfortable, snug resting place that was the sofa and followed Inuyasha out into the velvety black night.

:::=:::=:::

**AN**:  Eek.  Slow chapter with virtually no action and a long-winded Q&A session—but still, you gotta love it when those two bicker.  And to answer a question...I don't know what pairing this will end up as!  Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru are both so equally glompable!  How could I ever choose?!  *goes off to cry in dark corner*    

_Anyhow_, here's the general summary so far.  There's not much to it.  Really.  :D

Kagome meets up with Inuyasha at a bar.  Sesshoumaru and a pack of wolves attack him, and Inuyasha is about to leave her when he accidentally 'marks' her.  This 'scratch' is enough to infect her with lycanthropy (or the condition of being a werewolf), so Inuyasha is honor-bound to take her with him.  Honor-bound, as in he made her a wolf, so she's his responsibility.  I mean, he can't just _leave _her.  That would be a dastardly thing to do (don't you just /love/ that word?), even for Inuyasha.  She blacks out.  Chapter two focuses mainly on Sesshoumaru, and the state that the pack is in.  Inuyasha fled two years ago for unknown reasons (though you can bet it has something to do with a certain undead miko), but now he's come back, much to his brother's anger.  We also learn Sesshoumaru has no lupa, or mate, and that the pack wants him to choose right _now.  _What an unexpected _coincidence_! (*coughcough* *hackhack*)  Sorry, something in my throat. :D  Chapter three: Kagome wakes up at Sango's house, with Inuyasha standing bedside vigil.  After some talking, Inuyasha uses his power as a werewolf to sort of...transfer to Kagome his memories of what happened after they fled the bar.  She learns that she's gone terminally furry, then loses control of her beast due to shock-overload (dude, wouldn't you feel the same if you suddenly learned you would grow fur and fangs every time the moon was full?).  And that's where this chapter started off...

Hope that helped! Also, can someone tell me if they think the formatting is too spaced out? Thanks!  ^^  (And don't forget to leave a review!)


	5. Haunted

**Starbreak**

**AN:  **Eeee!  Technically, this chapter should've been out yesterday, but I ran into some technical difficulties. Don't kill me for slacking off!  ::twitch twitch::  

Anyway, I like this chapter.  It has everyone.  The only essential missing is Sesshoumaru.  Wah.  T_T (Thanks to kidoaraku for her coolios face thingies n_n) Also, the 'good girl' line was taken directly from LKH's series, though not word for word.  

**Chapter Five: Haunted**

"Are you three done yet?"—**Miroku**

:::=:::=:::

She followed him as quietly as she could, as if to disturb the night peace of shadows and starlight would result in some dire consequence, made more so threatening by its own obscurity.  For the moment there was nothing but silence, punctuated only by the sounds of grass and weeds flattening beneath her slippers.  

So it was quiet; so what?  That was a good thing, right?  After all, it meant that she wasn't going to give Inuyasha an excuse to crunch on her anytime soon.  

Minutes passed.  A dragonfly skimmed across her line of vision, wings a bare blur as it hovered like a miniature hang-glider before drifting away.  Even the nightly chorus of insects was strangely absent.  

She couldn't help it anymore.  She needed to say something, anything.  "Inuyasha!"

He flicked a hard gaze at her over his shoulder.  "What?"

"Uh—well," she fumbled.

"You have something to say, girl, say it.  Don't waste my time when your tongue twisted up into a knot."

"Gee, thanks," she almost snapped, then sighed.  "I just wanted to say, uh..."

"Yeah?"

"You're, uh...trampling all the flowers!" she offered, lamely.

And he was.  The Middle of Nowhere that they were currently stranded in, (or at least they seemed stranded, to Kagome) boasted a plethora of wildflowers, blossoms caressed silver by moonlight, but still glowing with thin edges of lady-slipper pink and tawny yellow and the lightest of light blue.  Inuyasha scowled at her again.  "I'm not—"

She pointed at the bruised petals that he had trodden to the ground.  "You are."  

"Feh!  Worrying about stupid things like flowers..." He spun around and marched off in the general direction of the looming forests.  She stared at the flowers in question.  They looked back up at her with innocent faces.

"Damnit, girl, hurry up!"

She gave a start, then hurried after him. 

This was all wrong.  Good girls just didn't go out at one in the morning on impromptu hiking trips.  Especially not with strange men—and this particular strange man was probably years her senior, if not in age, then in the matters of the world.  Because when it came down to it, she was just a girl: exposed to "bad things" when times had been at their worst, but still sheltered by her mother's loving shadow.  Kagome would've been the first to admit—she was naïve, in every sense of the word.  Somehow she knew turning into a werewolf wasn't going to change any of it.  

_Wrongo, Kagome dearest.  Inuyasha will probably try his damnest to remedy that, don't you think?  After all, not only is he "strange", he's also selfish, and irritating, and immature, and most importantly, **violent**—_

"Hey!  Wake up, wench!" 

Kagome blinked again.  "Huh," she said, rather intelligently.

Inuyasha snorted.  "I said at the pace we're going, we won't get to the goddamned forests until tomorrow night."

"But Sango said it was a ten minute walk from here," she said, recovering her wits.  The meadow slumbered around them, quiet and undisturbed as a moment's peace.  In the distance, the shadows of trees emerged from the grassy grounds, eerie and beautiful at the same time.  A rustle caught her ears, and her nose twitched unconsciously as the smell of something small, a rodent perhaps, wafted through her nostrils, tangy and heated and bursting with life.  

_Uck!_

She shook her head so violently that her hair flew, whipping around in vexed ebony strands.  One caught Inuyasha in the face, and he jerked back, snarling.

"Watch where you're swinging those things!"

"Next time don't come so close!" she retorted, but her words had no bite to them.  She sounded—tired, even to herself.  And she was, not just physically, but emotionally too.  And psychologically.  And mentally.  And—

She sighed, a tiny breath that puffed out through her nose.  _What's the difference? _she thought wearily.  _He's going to drag me with him no matter where he's going, or what time it is.  So I can't really damn him to the deepest, most fiery pits of hell unless I want to get hauled along for the ride._

Life was cruel.  God hated her.  She was a werewolf.  

_Go figure._   

"We're going to run," he declared, tone brooking no argument.

"I thought it was only going to take ten minutes?" she asked, trying for the calm, practical voice of reason.

"Feh!  You're walking too slow!"

Damnit.  Lack of caffeine was making her grumpy.  _Or maybe it's this trek through the woods with a werewolf who's into cannibalism, among other things.  Yeah.  That must be it._  The calm, practical voice of reason could go screw itself for all she cared.  "Okay.  You can run, I'll just walk.  But you'll be nice enough to look around for me when I get lost, right?"  She smiled at him, sweetly. 

"You won't get lost—" He was smiling, but there was something scary about it, like he was going to make good on his earlier threat to rip her apart like a favorite chew toy.  "Because you're coming with me!"  

_Oh!_

In a heartbeat, he had grabbed onto her upper arms and lifted her against him.  Somehow she found herself sprawled against his back with strong hands bracing and tight against her thighs.  Any other time she would've thrown a fit (along with a few punches) for carrying her in such a questionableway, but for now she was too much in awe of watching the peaceful glade hurtle by at an unrivaled speed, the grounds streaking together into rich hues of viridian.  When her hair streamed into her eyes, effectively blinding her, she nearly shrieked.  Out of pure instinct, her hand clutched onto his shoulder, white the other one latched itself into the safety curtain that was his hair.  

How he managed it, she didn't know.  She had learned a thing or two about anatomy, the way humans were built, as contrasted with dogs, and cats, and horses, and whatnot.  What he was doing was technically impossible—his back hunched to balance out her weight, his center of gravity all out of focus, yet still running at an incredible speed.  

Lycanthropy was legal, but it hadn't gone mainstream enough for inclusion into general education.  Not yet, anyway.  So there was no way for her to tell, unless she wanted to switch her major to Preternatural Studies. 

And it was running, wasn't it?  Only it felt nothing like running.  She closed her eyes, leaning forward against the set of his shoulders; if she hadn't been so distracted she would've felt the tense tremor run through his body before it leaked away.  But she was too lost in her thoughts, too lost in the moment—if she squeezed her eyes shut, hard until little purple dots appeared in her vision and the sting of the wind melted—yes, she could believe, in odd bits and ends, in beautiful princesses and handsome knights and fairy-tale endings, or at the very least in a normal life where there were no such things as werewolves, or shapeshifters, or mikos, or other cruel, inconveniences that were un-fairytale-likein the _extreme_—

She had no sooner let her cheek rest against the warm, soft hair beneath her hands than she was unceremoniously dumped off onto her back.

"I'm not your cuddletoy, girl!" he bit out with a surprising vehemence.  

She sat up, dusted herself off.  "Are you okay?" she asked, trying to hide that curious edge to her voice and failing miserably.  

He snapped out a sharp, "Fine."

"..."

"I said I'm fine!"

She shook her head, exasperated.  "Are we there yet?  Tell me you didn't just dump me off some few miles walk from the forest."

His face darkened to a red-stained paleness.  Fury bled out from underneath the storm of his emotions—frustration, especially, with the golden eyes dilated into inky pupils and the irises themselves nearly gone.  For a moment he looked like he was going to do something that they would both regret, but it passed in a few uneven heartbeats.  He turned away.

_What did I do?  What did I say? _

Why is he so angry...? 

_"_You're eyes..." 

"Werewolf eyes," he said shortly.  "We're here.  Behind you."

For the second time that evening, Kagome found herself thinking about how Terribly Wrong this all was.  _I—I can't get use to this!  Seeing in the dark like I've somehow got night-vision goggles surgically grafted into the back of my head—I'm not supposed to—_

_But of course I can see it.  I'm a werewolf now!  Whoop-dee-doo!  _Now why hadn't she thought of that before?

She scrambled to her feet, trying to erase the taste of fear from her mouth.  "Okay."  Then for good measure, she added cheerfully, "Let's go get 'em!"  It only sounded a little forced.  She gave herself a mental pat on the back.

"Why the hell are youso happy?"  His voice came from behind her as she stomped through knee-high grasses towards the thickening of trees, where darkness gathered in a foreboding pool of pitch-black.

"Because if I'm not, then I'm going to be scared.  And when I scared I have this strange urge to scream and scream and scream until I manage to get all the fear out of my system.  So the only way I can avoid _that _is to be happy."  Tension formed a hard knot in her throat as she trooped through the clustering trees like any good soldier.  It didn't matter that she could see through the gloom, could see the tiny threads of moonlight that had somehow stolen their way through the canopy of leaves.  It was all as clear as daylight, but in a night sense of the word.  It was also as disquieting as hell.  "Does that make any sense at all?" 

Silence.  Then: "You are a strange woman."    

She gave a giddy half-smile at that, even though she knew he couldn't see her face.  "Thank you.  I think that's the first nice thing you've said to me since I met you at that bar yesterday."  Another beat of silence.  God, she couldn't stand this silence.  "So talk to me about yourself."

"Why?"

"Because we obviously have nothing else to do."  _Because if I don't fill up this quiet with useless blabber I'm going to go insane._  "I know!  We'll play twenty questions!"  She turned around to see him staring at her as if she were insane.

"Well?" she asked.  A slightly frantic giggle tried to escape from her lips.

"I don't have the time—"

"But aren't I your—_wolf pup_?"  Just saying it made her throat tighten up.  So she smiled even wider, even though something wet nipped at the back of her eyes.  "I'm stuck with you, Inuyasha.  You don't have time to get to know some girl you turned into a werewolf, accidentally or not—_why_?"

"You're taking this too damn seriously!"

"I'm taking this too _seriously?_  Hah!  Ahaha! Ah—"      

"Shut up!"  

"No, you shut up!" and she was suddenly yelling, voice hoarse from anger.  "I'm going to turn furry and grow fangs and howl at the moon the next time it's full!  _You have no right to tell me to shut up!_"

She steeled herself from the verbal retaliation that she knew would come.  But there was nothing, only the pungent smell of the forest around her and the quiet song that was the wind.  

"Fine."

"Fine," she repeated.

"Go on, then."

"What?"

"I thought you wanted to play twenty questions, wench."  He had started walking again, stride purposeful, as if leading them both to someplace that he had in mind.  "Then play."

"Um.  Okay."  She huffed out a breath, tried to roll the tension out of her shoulders.  _I can do this.  I can do this._  "Well, then, what is your favorite...ice cream?"

He muttered something.

"What?"

"I said I can't believe I'm—" he stopped, took a breath, and started up again.  "Rocky road.  I like...the marshmallows." 

It struck her that Inuyasha didn't seem like a marshmallow type of person.  But she wisely kept quiet.  "Okay.  Your turn!"  _That's it, Kagome.  Blind him with your all-natural perkiness!_

A rude sound issued from his throat.  "Whatever."

_Okay...so my perkiness isn't working.  _She blew bangs out of her eyes, still trying to keep up with his ground-eating pace.  "Humor me, please?"

He glared back at her.  She smiled sweetly.  

"Fine.  What's your favorite ice cream?"  The words were guttural, as if they had been yanked out of his throat.  

_I already asked that_, was at the tip of her tongue, but it was swallowed in an instant.  "Coffee!"

"No fucking surprise there."

_Ignore it.  Ignore it.  _"Board game?"

"...Monopoly."  He growled, seeing the surprised look on her face.  "What were you expecting—Candyland?"

"No, no!  Anyway, I like...uh, Scrabble!"  She practically heard him thinking, _typical_, but she let it go.  "What about—"   

He stopped so suddenly that she walked into him.  Stumbling around had its advantages, she decided, as he grabbed her elbow, fingers strong but not harsh.  Despite her own insistence upon playing, she breathed a sigh a relief at the distraction.  _Don't think he minds at all, either.  I was running out of questions._  

"Be quiet."

Before them the covering of hanging vines and thicket of leaves cleared, and the sky swept out, midnight black but alive with stars.  The ground sloped down into a small opening where not a tree had touched with roots.  "Why?"  _Oh no, not the quiet._

"Listen!"

"What?  To what—"

He covered her mouth, palm callused and harsh.  She gave a surprised squeak, but even that was muffled as his fingers pressed harder.  "Shut up!"

_Listen._

_There's nothing to listen **to**—_

Her gaze tangled with his.  He carefully removed his hand, but jabbed a finger into the side of her head, presumably at her ears.  She frowned, but was quiet.

_Listen._

The sounds of the forest.  Her ears pricked, again as unconsciously as that of her itching nose, so eager earlier to sniff out edible rodents.  She could feel her cheeks blanching at that thought.  _Edible...rodents..._

_Edible..._

_Listen..._

The forest murmured around her, a nurturing, tender mother.  A hint of a breeze sighed through brambles and leaves, all highlighted in pastel radiance, signed and sealed with the kiss of moonlight.  She watched, and _listened_, entranced, as the dance that was forest life went on around her, in the curling tendrils of a delicate vine as it climbed up tree trunks, in the lonely call of a hunting owl, wings soaring and eyes a harsh heat in the darkness, in the tiny snuffling sounds of a rabbit as it dug through dirt and seed and leaves for her burrow—

—And in the way a deer picked her delicate way among the lush overgrowth.  

_Listen._

She breathed a wondering _oh_.  The thing galloping in her chest was her heart, and she caught Inuyasha's eyes, dim starlight reflecting in the golden depths.  He looked as hypnotized as she felt, both of them willing victims in the glorious heat of the hunt.  The prey.  

_A doe.  A doe without a mother._

That should've snapped her out of her dream world.  But it didn't.

_No mother.  Not a defense in the whole world._

His fingers tightened on her shoulders.  She hadn't even realized that his hands were on her shoulders in the first place.  The whisper came so soft she might have mistaken it for the wind, if he had not leaned in so close to her ear, breath tracing shivery chills along the sensitive shell.  "Stay.  This one is mine."

The protest was on the tip of her tongue.  Something snarled low in her throat, possessive and angry at being denied.  She swallowed it, shocked at herself.

Warm wind trickled from around his curled fists, and his eyes closed.  Standing there and looking up at him, she realized for the first time that he wasn't that much taller than her—a few inches at most.  But he was lean, with muscle strung out on that limber frame, like a panther.  

_Or, well, a wolf._  

She remembered.  Hadn't he gathered her in his arms when they had escaped from Sesshoumaru?  Hadn't he done the same again, when she had nearly lost control of her beast that second time at Sango's?

His breath hitched out, and his face tightened in concentration.  When he opened his hands again they were elongated, furred silver, and tipped with claws.  He smiled down at her, wicked as sin, eyes delighting in the promised hunt.  Her throat constricted—but was it in fear?  Disgust?  Excitement?  All three?  None?

He was gone in an instant.  

_Gone._

She thought she caught a silver streak along the edge of her vision, but when she whipped around she was still alone.  

_Inuyasha—_

Her ears grasped at a hidden sigh, nose seizing on the sudden scent of blood.  Then a triumphant growl wrenched her head to the right—the smell of death crescendoed in her nostrils, potent and fresh and exciting and—

Her stomach revolted.  Hard.  The beast churned deep inside her belly, the change clawing at her human form, demanding to be released.  _No.  I can control it.  _

_Fight it._

She crumpled onto her knees, head hanging as breaths came out in ragged gasps.  The world pounded in one moonlit flash-frame after another.  She dug her hands through the thick carpet of leaves, and they disintegrated, rotting at a touch.  A scream choked hard in the back of her throat.  _I can control it.  _

_"All wolves—control their beast—after first change—"_

Someone was yelling in her ear.  Hands yanked at her forearms, wrenching her upright until she was staring, unseeing, into Inuyasha's eyes.  The smell of spilled death jerked at her beast, and the monster within herself warred with her miko blood, each fighting tooth to claw, neither succumbing an inch.  She collapsed against his chest.  Her nails had lengthened to long, sharp daggers.  _I can't.  I can't.  Dear god help me, I can't—_

His warmth, his life burned, like fire through her clothing.  She hissed, snarling.  Wanted him.  Wanted to tear him apart, rip him to shreds, taste the blood on her tongue.  _Want.  Now.  _She lunged at him, knocking him over into the sloping grounds.  Together they tumbled down into the bottom, where weeds and fallen branches scratched at her arms, her face, like they were alive.  The deer lay next to them, eyes open and dulled to burnt-out charcoal.  Forgotten.  His face was pale gold in the light, shocked.  

She went for his throat.

_Close, close, so close_

He caught her in a struggle of claws.

_Control_

She snapped at him with jaws only half-human.

_the beast_

The power spilled over her in a long wash of fire, the only warning the small grimace on his face as he held her close, hands locked and muscles taut as iron.

_Can't_

Her spine spasmed, bowed back until she arched up to the moon.  Where he touched her—her wrists, her knees, the sides of her bared legs—her skin prickled like static electricity.  It marched up the sides of her arms, spilling down and swirling sideways until her body was vibrating to the power.  _His _power.  

_"I can control the change—" he said._

The pressure built.  Like the air before a storm, heated and still—like violence waiting to explode into oblivion.  She trembled, pain stabbing along her temple in little jagged spikes.  It hurt.  He was forcing his power down her throat, and it _hurt_.  __

_Force me back_

He growled beneath her, anger and frustration and heat channeled up into that massive aura of boiling energy, so solid that she couldn't move, couldn't breath, couldn't even _panic—_

_No no swimming no water no ocean no_

It broke.  In a rush of pure liquid fire, it broke over her, pushing strands of hair back from her face, stinging in her eyes.  She breathed.  And when she lifted up her hands into the moonlight they were weak human nails, somewhat well kept but still sporting the consequences of anxiety here and there, the middle one chewed down to the quick, the thumb slightly nibbled—

And she broke down too, collapsing down onto his chest, and wept, for the loss of her normality, her humanity, her fairy-tale endings.  And he let her.  It was enough.

_Just let me grieve..._

She didn't know how long she stayed curled up on top of him, too shocked to move and too exhausted to care about their awkward position.  Her limbs still shivered spastically, warm power running its course through her veins.  Her teeth ached, her joints hurt, and her lip stung, but she was human.  _Human.  _

How had he...?  

_"I said I could control the change for myself!"_

"You okay?"  His voice came roughened with fatigue.  After an awkward pause, his hand rose to pat her shoulder, uneasy as a nervous teenager out on his first date.  Something told her Inuyasha wasn't used to comforting people.

"No," she snuffled, "But I will be."  __

_Hah.  Right._

She raised her head—and froze.  His eyes, tawny orange in the starlight, were watching her, inches away.  The heat radiating off him was a palpable thing, thick and tense.  But the roiling energy that was uniquely his had stilled, like a calm surface of water.  Kagome jerked her face away, body tensing in screaming awareness of how _close _he was.  And yet at the same time, she felt the undeniable urge to reach out, physically, to pass her hand over his face, wonder at how tranquil his power had gone, how _human—_

She was dumped off onto her back for the second time that evening.  "_Hey!_"  It came out a harsh croak.

"Damnit!  It wasn't supposed to be this hard!"

Fatigue dragged at her limbs, but she labored to her knees, touched a cautionary hand to his turned shoulder.  "I thought you said you couldn't control the change in others," she said, quietly.

"I thought so to."  He sounded tired, drained.  _From expending too much energy on me, _she thought guiltily.

"...I can't feel your aura anymore, you know."

"Aura?  That's what you call it?"

She hesitated.  "Or your power."  The palm of her hand hovered just above his skin as he turned his face towards her.  "Normally, when I'm near you...you give off this..._energy.  _That werewolf feel that Sango and Sesshoumaru had, too.  But now..."

"Guess I don't have to tell you that part, then."  He laughed, almost a growl.  "What do they call it in China?  Something—forgot—"

"Chi?"

"Yeah.  Life force.  Weres use it to battle if they don't want to fight, physically.  Sometimes it's easier."  He eyed her for a moment, then turned away, voice strained.  "Looks like my wolf pup is going to be much more of a fucking nuisance than I thought."  

Her fingers faltered, wavering.  She didn't want to touch him, not like this.  Not when he felt so normal.  After all, Inuyasha the violent werewolf was easy to deal with, but how could she still hate him when he felt so human?  

He hissed at her, teeth dull in the moonlight, and caught her hand, forcing it to his cheek.  His grip tingled around her wrists, but the sensation of crawling fire ants was gone, like it had never been.  Barely a hum of his power crept up to her fingertips, and she thought even that might have been her imagination.  

_It's too worn out to be called up so soon again._

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Something twisted underneath the surface of his eyes.  "Don't give me that!"

She flinched back.  "What—"

"So I'm not powerful enough!  I can't control your beast without weakening mine!"  He threw her hand back to her, and she instinctively cradled it against her chest.  "We can figure out a way to restrain it, damnit!" He was roaring, and the sound echoed around the darkness, disturbing the stillness of the trees as his last words bounced back to them like the hymns of crazed forest nymphs.  _Damnit...damnit...damnit..._

She reached out to touch his face before she could stop herself, moved by the seething self-anger she saw there.  "It's not your fault..."

This time it was his turn to flinch back as her fingertips grazed past his temple.  "You don't get it," and his words were choked.  "If you can't control the beast—I can't always help you—you don't understand—" and he staggered to his feet.

"Inuyasha, I—"

"_You'll die, damnit!_"  __

She blinked once.  Her hand dropped back to her lap, lifeless.

"It's your miko blood, I knew it would act up.  It let you change over from witch to wolf, but the same thing that guaranteed your survival is fighting against your wolf form."  He sucked in a ragged breath.  "You'll fight it every time, every time you're near a kill, or feeling some extreme emotion.  But you _can't.  _You're not _supposed _to fight the change."  He was talking fast, words running together in a panic.  "You'll almost always lose, and if another alpha as strong as me isn't around, you'll change into a mindless wolf, attack anything that moves within a mile's radius of you.  And it will be all beast, no human.  And then you'll go insane, or _die_ from changing too much, damnit, _why are you looking at me like that?_"

"Inuyasha..."

"I can't let you die!Not one of mine_—"_

 "Behind you," she whispered.

He stiffened.  Froze.  Still as a corpse.  "_Damnit._"

"You're scaring all the prey away with your fucking theatrics.  I need to feed, you know."

Inuyasha whirled around so fast it was like he hadn't moved at all, but was facing towards the stranger in the first place.  "Where the hell are you, Miroku?"

"Don't call someone I'm not."  He slipped out of the shadows.  Kagome's nose twitched at the feral, wild scent that invaded her nostrils; the energy that whipped her hair back screamed danger and wildfire.  The stranger chuckled.  

"Inuyasha—" she started.

"I don't know who he is," he growled to her over his shoulder, answering her unspoken question.  He directed his attention back to the wolf—and she was sureof it.  He was—_a wolf.  A powerful one.  An...alpha.  _"Where's Miroku!"

"Here," came a calm voice, and then another man materialized out of the shadows.  She thought she recognized him, the glimmer of those violet eyes that flickered over them, only a touch curious.  "Long time no see, Inuyasha," he said, and it might have been sardonic.

Inuyasha straightened.  "You're here on the pack's bidding?"

The stranger snorted, tossing back a long tail of onyx hair.  "On the _Ulfric's_."  He spat the word out like it was poison.

"Kouga."  Miroku's voice held warning, and more.  

"Miroku," the wolf called Kouga tossed right back.

_Inuyasha,_ she wanted to say.  But her throat was frozen shut.

"Is that a challenge?"  Miroku's words had softened in warning.

Kouga glared with heated cerulean eyes.  "Not yet."  

"Jesus, take your squabbling somewhere where _I _don't have to listen to it!" Inuyasha rumbled at them.  But still he sounded tired.  

Kouga looked like he had something much more on mind than just squabbling, but then his gaze flicked sideways—to her.  She flinched back unconsciously, and he smiled.

"Yo, who's the girl?"

"No one of your concern."  Miroku said calmly.  He looked over at where she lay on the leaves too, eyes brushing over her body from head to toe in blatant appreciation.  Then he turned back to Inuyasha.  "Yours?"

"Hey!  I'm not _anyone's _property!  This is the twenty-first century we're living in—" and then she remembered she was currently speaking to a trio of wolves.  

On second thought, how did she even forget in the first place?

"Quiet, wench."  Inuyasha, voice a whiplash of warning.  She resisted the childish urge to stick her tongue out at him.  "Yeah," he said, turning back to Miroku; and then to Kouga: "Don't forget it, brat."

He shrugged.  "Don't matter if she's gonna die anyway."

Kagome's throat tightened, and she had bolted to her feet before she knew what she was doing.  "How can you even talkabout that like it's _nothing_, you bastard?"

"Kagome!" Inuyasha crossed over to her in a flash.  She stifled her anger against his shoulder.  "Control yourself," he whispered-growled.  But he didn't try to touch her, only leant her a brief moment where she could lean on his shoulder.  "Stay," he said, and then he turned back to the two wolves, leaving her to brace herself against the tree.

"Huh..." Kouga was still eyeing her.  "Got yourself a feisty chick, Inuyasha?"  He tossed back his head, laughed.  "That's what they use to say about your other one, you know.  Cute little thing—" he sniffed in her direction, "—and tasty too."  The look he gave Inuyasha was sly.     

_Other one?_

She didn't see Inuyasha move, but he was suddenly gripping Kouga by the throat, pinning him up against the side of a tree.  "Don't," he snarled, and pure, unadulterated hate roughened his voice to a rasping growl.  "Don't speak her name!  Not to me!"

"Who?" Kouga laughed, despite the hands around his neck.  He raised two muscular arms up to Inuyasha's wrist, then wrapped fingers around the forearm holding him by the throat.  For a moment there was nothing but electric silence, the two wolves wrestling against one another, neither willing to give any ground.  Then Kouga laughed.  "Which one are you talking about?"  The air thickened with his power, so solid it burned when she breathed it in.  "The new girl, Kagome?"  

She watched Inuyasha grimace as Kouga continued to pry at his hand.  Saw the fine tremble of his shoulders.  _Don't.  You're too weak—_

"Or..."

"Shut up!" Inuyasha roared, and the air crackled again.  

"_—Kikyo?_"

"_Shut up!_" And then he lifted Kouga up, the muscles is his arm straining, to throw him through the air.  Some part of her noted the irony of this _(this really is a cheesy B-movie)_ before the thought was wiped out—and Kouga crashed into a tree next to her.  The impact of body and wood made a sickening _thunk_ before sliding onto the ground.  She tried desperately to bury the terrified noises that were scratching their way out of her throat.

Miroku was watching dispassionately.  "He had that one coming."

There was blood.  Not a lot, but enough to show up stark red in the moonlight, staining Kouga's white shirt crimson.  She took a few steps towards him, unreasonable fear beating in her heart.

"Kagome," Inuyasha panted out, "Don't you fucking _dare _go near him."

"But he's hurt!" she cried.

Miroku tsked.  "And naïve, too," he said softly, almost to himself.

"What if he—"

"_He's a werewolf, Kagome!_"

But she had already taken the last few stubborn steps to reach his side.  Packed dirt ground and scratchy grasses rubbed her knees raw, but she forced herself to turn him over, to place searching fingers to his pulse.  Breath exploded out in a relieved sigh when she found it, strong and beating underneath the burning skin.  She rocked back on her heels, then turned her head to see a very-pissed-off Inuyasha.  The word _rapid dog_ came to mind—

—and a hand latched onto her wrist, yanking over to the side.  Kagome toppled over with a surprised _oomph_ before landing on the stranger's chest.  His grip tightened on her shoulders, tugging her forward until she was face-to-face with him, legs straddling his stomach and his blue-green eyes biting into hers.  She nearly screamed again, but then outrage sparked somewhere in the back of her mind; her knee came up, hard.  He twisted aside, avoiding her like a ghost.  She squirmed in his grasp.  The grin on his face was wicked, his hands yanking her forward again, closing the distance between their lips to a distant breath.  He smiled, murmured, "You smell good, wench."

His mouth came up crushing warm and tangy against hers.  A hand snaked into her hair, wrenching her down until she cried out in anger; he deepened the kiss to possessive, and bruisingly hard.  When they broke apart she was gasping for breath, and the bad-boy grin was still on his face.  "And you taste good, too."

"You _bastard_," she screamed, and swung a hand in to slap him in the face—

Inuyasha chose that moment to interfere, snagging her wrist in mid-strike and hauling her off Kouga like she weighed less than a feather.  His face was distorted in fury, and a snarl broke off his tongue.  The power trembled in the air, less potent, less choking than before, but still there.  She felt the way he shuddered against her though, frame supporting both her and channeling his power.  _Again.  No, it's too soon._  

"Inuyasha, _don't—_"

Kouga struggled to his feet, the gash on his shoulder still leaking blood.  His lips twisted in a half smile.  "So this is the almighty half-breed Inuyasha, eh?"

Inuyasha snarled wordlessly.  His frame shook harder; the air thickened some more.  She screamed something into his ear, but even she couldn't make any sense of it as the words lost themselves in the all-encompassing roar of his rage.  

"Is that all you can come up with?" Kouga swayed, but the smile stayed on, a challenge, a baring of teeth.  "Let's see some action, bastard—" And his beast roared to the surface, those cerulean eyes swirling into pinpricks of sea green.  A blast of heat tore her hair back from her face, and she ducked instinctively.  Inuyasha's arm curled hard around her, muscles tight.  She felt him shudder again as Kouga's aura marched over them, crushing and yet weightless at the same time; felt him fight back with his other arm outstretched, the power pulsing together, the pressure riding all three at the same time.  __

_I'm useless.  I can't do anything.  Always._  

_Stop, _she tried to whisper into his hair.  It smelled like fur and musk and spicy heat.  _You can't do this._

_Help him._

_Help him!_

And she did, tearing herself away from his arms and flinging her body the short distance between them and Kouga.  She crashed into his side—the impact left her head spinning, and they dropped down together, rolling to a stop near the base of a weathered elm.  But the struggling power that had made it so hard to breathe had disappeared.

When Kouga raised his eyes they had gone normal again, cerulean but no longer glassy.  "Why the hell did you do that?  I was winning—"

Until Inuyasha dragged her back up.  "Why the hell did you do that?" he yelled, voice gone rough as granite around the edges.  "_You can't interfere in a challenge, wench!_"

Silence.

"Are you three done yet?"  Miroku moved into her line of vision, bending down next to Kouga.  

"Damnit, Miroku!" Inuyasha.  "Why didn't you stop the bastard?"

A low growl trickled out from Kouga's throat.  "Watch who you're calling _bastard_, half-breed."

Kagome tried to tug her hand out of Inuyasha's grip.  "Will you let me _go_?" she snapped when he stubbornly held on to her.

His eyes cut back to her, and there was a softness to them that he couldn't hide, like he was relieved.  But the words that came out of his mouth next were anything but grateful.  "I'm your dominant.  Don't question what I say!"  And then he pushed her aside, roughly, but not before whispering a gruff, "_Thanks._"

She staggered but didn't go down.  _Did Inuyasha just **thank **me?_

Inuyasha stalked towards the two wolves, every line of his body trembling in exhaustion.  His rough breathing was the only sound in the entire forest; not a rustle of life stirred.  Kagome shivered.  _Somehow they sensed the power.  They felt it coming, some kind of warning sign.  _The shiver crawled up her spine again._  And then they hid. _

"Miroku..."

His lashes came down to veil glittering eyes.  "Inuyasha."  

She heard Inuyasha swallow.  "Why did you go over to him, Miroku?"

"Sesshoumaru-sama..."

Inuyasha hissed.  "Yes."

"Our Ulfric is fair, and strong.  I can...rely on him."

Kouga gave a disbelieving snort, but stayed silent.

"You couldn't stand him!"

Miroku inclined his head gracefully.  "That's true."

"So much—everything's so different."  Inuyasha went quiet for a moment.  "You know Sango...she hates your guts now."  

"My, my," Miroku laughed, but it was bitter to listen to, like trying to swallow broken glass.  "How eloquently you put it."

"Why did you...leave her?"

The air flared; she recoiled warily.  Rage snapped at the surface of her skin like furious, fire-breathing dragons.  Miroku was growling.  "Because _you _left _us_!" 

"I—"

"You _ran_, Inuyasha!  You think Sango and I could ever forgive you for that?"  His voice dropped down to a whisper.  "Sneaking away, leaving us to deal with the consequences ourselves.  Naraku wanted to _kill _us, did you know?  For being supporters to that traitor Inuyasha, he said.  He wanted to kill _Sango.  You think I would've willingly let that happen?_"

The sound of Inuyasha's broken breath hissed across to her ears.  "No," he said, defeated.

"...I struck a deal with him."

"My brother?"

"Yes.  Sesshoumaru isn't stupid.  He knows how strong I am."

"Your service for Sango's life."

He laughed.  "How quickly you catch on, Inuyasha!"

"Miroku—"

"You know, it really isn't all that bad," he interrupted.  "Acting as the Ulfric's bodyguard.  One of the most powerful wolves in the pack.  No one would _dare_ challenge me.  The perfect life, no?"  A tremor of harsh regret strung through his words.  "Except Sango refuses to talk to me anymore.  She can't even _look _at me."

Stillness.  Even Kouga was watching, albeit with a small smirk playing along his lips.

Miroku snorted laughter.  "She hates me for betraying you, you know.  Oh, the poetic irony.  You flee, and your supporters are torn apart by your cowardice.  Perfect."

"I didn't think—"

"Of course you didn't!  You _never _think!"

Kagome found her voice.  "We'll tell her!  She'll understand!  We'll tell her and—"

"Don't you think I've tried to explain already?"

Her hand went up to her mouth as Miroku spun her way.  "She won't _listen_!" he roared.  "You think she would believe you, some newly turned wolf pup," he pointed at her, "Or even better, _you_," he stabbed a stiff finger in Inuyasha's direction, "_Our fearless leader who ran away with his tail tucked between his legs?_"  

"Damnit, I didn't—" "You're not going to apologize, it's already too late—" 

"I needed to get away.  I had no time for challenging Sesshoumaru—"

"You couldn't even _think_straight, and yet you wanted to go out on your own—"

"I'm sorry!"

"It's not enough!  Tell that to Sango, Inuyasha—!"

_"Stop!_" she screamed.

They stopped.

"Why are you wasting your time arguing?  Can't you see this is getting _nowhere_?  All this bitterness—this hate—it's all in the past!  Can't you just let it _go_?"  Unreasonable anger forced the torrent of words out.  "I don't know what happened to everyone back then, but it couldn't be so bad that you have to—to—" and she yelled, desperately, with eyes squeezed shut, as if it were easier to keep her anger that way, "—declare _never-ending hatred_ or something so completely _stupid _for each other through all eternity?  And this exactly what it is!  Extreme, utter, _stupidity!_"

Power crackled.  _Oh great, now one of them is going to steamroll me apart with his life-force/chi thingie—_and then she opened her eyes to see the warm light of flames dancing in front of her eyes, eating up the dead forest leaves beneath her hands.

Three pairs of wolf eyes stared at her, all in apparent shock.  She reached out in giddy disbelief, then snatched her hand back as the flames seemed to flickered out towards her like fingers hungry—for her.  The small fire spat out sparks, and one landed on the skin of her arm; she stifled a cry, trying to shake it off.  It died out before her eyes, toning down to a dim glow of orange before it disappeared altogether, leaving behind only blistered leaves and the sharp stench of something burned in the air.

_I think they just forgot about my little screaming fit.  _Which was a very, very good thing.

It was Kouga who broke the tense silence.  "She didn't taste like a normal were.  I was wondering which flavor."

_Normal were.  _Her thoughts swung around woozily.  _Normal werewolf, born as a shapeshifter.  Not a crossover from another race.  That's what he means._

"I thought she was changed from faerie, or a necromancer, at first," Miroku said evenly, like he hadn't just been trying to tear out Inuyasha's throat a minute ago—_figuratively speaking, of course.  _"Then you are a witch?" he asked her, so politely too.

She stared at her hands.  A distant, irreverent part of her mourned the ruins that had once been her nails.  "I didn't know..." she whispered, turning up her eyes towards Inuyasha.  "Did you?"

He gave a weary growl.  "Fire, eh?  You're just full of surprises, wench."

"Can you call it again?"  Kouga this time, on all fours, moving towards her with all the fluidity of a true predator.  His eyes smoldered in suggestion.  "A miko turned by lycanthropy..." he whispered, lip curling up.  "No wonder Inuyasha made you his own..." He was near her now, growl reaching her ears in undertones of distant heat.  The burnt leaves made no sound underneath his weight.  "And of course, there's always you looking like his beloved Kikyo..."  

In a flurry of snarls and twisting limbs, Inuyasha had thrown him aside.  This time Kouga rolled only a short distance before coming to all fours, crouching down onto some fallen brambles.  Moonlight danced in flickers along his bronzed skin.  He was laughing; pure, joyous sounds of amusement, both chilling and strangely intoxicating to listen to, like drinking too much of a fine wine.  "It's been fun, Inuyasha!  I think I'll let Miroku deal with the rest of this bullshit."  His eyes swept over to Kagome with barefaced promise.  "I'll be seeing you," he said, and this time the words weren't directed to Inuyasha at all.

He vanished into the shadows, moving away until only the smell of him remained, sweat and acrid cigarettes.  She shivered.  Inuyasha growled.  Miroku sighed, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like _blast that Kouga._

"Is he always making trouble like this?" Inuyasha asked.  She almost reached out to touch his back, but he tensed.  His entire posture screamed _don't.  _Her hand went back to her lap, where it clenched into a white fist.

"Yes."  Miroku leaned up against a tree trunk, face closed.  "Ever since him and Kagura joined our pack there's been nothing but one difficulty after another."  He cracked open an eye.  "You know Sesshoumaru wanted you to kill Kouga for him."

"Would've been happy to."

Miroku shook his head.  "But you almost lost.  Why?"

"Shit.  You—?"

"Yes, I noticed."

"Can't fucking hide anything from you, Miroku."

"Is it because of—" he gestured to Kagome, "the miko and her unstable transformation?"  _Still talking about me like I'm not here._  Kagome was just too drained to care.

"So what if it is?" A bitter laugh.  "You going to run and go tell daddy?"

Nothing from Miroku, not even a glimmer of anger.  Just resignation.  "He has my loyalties, no more.  The threat to Sango's life holds, even now."

"Not if I overthrow his-tight-assed-majesty," Inuyasha said, but the bone-deep weariness still stamped down the usual ferocity of his voice.

Miroku only stared with his arms crossed.  "You should've killed Kouga when you had the chance.  Maybe it would have curried you some favor from your brother."

"I don't need his favor!" he snarled.  "And Sesshoumaru wouldn't be happy about it either way!"

"The Ulfric.  Now that you are pack again that is what you will acknowledge him as."  His voice had gone formal, frosty.

"I'm not pack yet, technically.  And I don't have time for your formalities, Miroku.  You've been here for too fucking long."

She sat there, fists curled up.  Staring at nothing.  Listening to them argue.  And a childhood rhyme came back to her, her father's voice deep and hearty and laughing, joking with her, tugging at her fists, ruffling her hair.

_Mirror, mirror, on the wall,_

_Who's the fairest of them all?_

"We've gone through so much today, haven't we?"  Miroku's laugh was distant but just as cynical.  "When all I needed to do, really, was to tell you that the pack reception will be two nights from now.  At the holy grounds.  You know when, and who, and what."

_Pretty little girl with bonny blue eyes and shiny black hair..._

A quiet _yes _from Inuyasha.

Kagome the human? 

_Kagome the miko?_

_Kagome the werewolf?_

She looked up blindly to see him watching her from his seat on the forest slope.  His knees were drawn up, arms folded over in weariness.  He was staring at her, transfixed, eyes studying her face, almost as if he were trying to memorize every arch, every line, every contour.  When he saw her looking back he snapped his face away.

"And Inuyasha—"    

She imagined if he had ears they would have twitched in Miroku's direction.

"Give this to Sango for me."

A flash of metal caught the moonlight.  When Inuyasha opened his hand, a silver cross lay there, chain a delicate spill of slight links and diamonds burning white fire.  Miroku smiled, before the glitter of quicksilver disappeared as quickly as it had come.  

"Tell her to keep the faith," he said, and then he departed, melting away as completely as Kouga had done before, leaving them to stare across darkness and the obscurity of ashen starlight to each other.  

Still the cross blazed bright faith in their own little cavern of the unknown. 

:::=:::=:::

**AN**:  Long.  Tired.  Must stop speaking in short sentences.  Cannot find the energy to type even more convoluted prose.  Anyway.  Review.  Please.  It cures cancer.  It fills the stomachs of the poor.  Among other miraculous things.  ARGH! (Shamelessly ripped off from ClamChowder.  But you shouldn't mind that. *smiles sheepishly, then falls down dead*)


End file.
